[agentjayd007]

I'm not sure if I am making this post in the right forum. I was thinking maybe it belongs in the off topic section since it isn't about being in the game itself, but it still has to due with EQ.

My first memory of EQ wasn't actually being in the game itself. See, my mom worked with a guy who played EQ and during one of those "take your son/daughter to work for a day" things, he showed me everlore.com. I read up on all the classes and races, the cities, everything. I had to have EQ. A week later my dad and I went to the mall and we passed by FuncoLand, which eventually would become GameStop. Through one of the windows I saw EQ sitting on a shelf, it was the Kunark box art with Firiona Vie and that blue Iksar. I begged my dad to buy it and he did. Then we walked to the food court for dinner, I could hardly eat though because of how excited I was. I read that box up one side and down the other. Eventually, I got home, installed the game, and asked dad for his credit card cause it was $15 a month. He wasn't too thrilled about the game having a subscription, but he paid it anyway.

That was the first memory I made about EQ and I would make countless others as the years went by.

Things have been going pretty crappy for me for a little over a year now. It's really difficult to keep my head above water while I try and get to a better place mentally and emotionally. EQ is such a powerful thing, the immersion and the world itself is something I was amazed at when I first played at 12 years old right when Kunark came out. Here I am 20 years later and it still makes me feel that way. The sounds and the music and the look of the zones take me back. Honestly, the game has been therapeutic in a way because sometimes if I feel like just saying something out loud that I am too afraid to say in real life, I do so in game when I find a nice secluded spot to myself. Usually that place is the river in Toxxulia Forest, but if people are around, I'll find somewhere else. Like in the middle of the forest in Greater Faydark or something.

EverQuest reminds me that I can be happy. I remember how it made me feel when I was a kid. The memories help me cope with my alcoholism in a way by reminding me of life before alcohol and that self medicating with a toxic substance won't help anything. I relapsed recently and the guilt and shame I felt from it shook me to my core, but logging into EQ helps me deal with that, even when I am going through withdrawals and I can't sleep and have to force myself to eat something even though I have no appetite. I have been on the server since before P99 launched Kunark and have yet to hit max level on a character because honestly, I don't care about leveling. I made a druid to specifically be able to port around the world and go back to the same places I went to as a kid. It's an escape. I'm not sticking my head in the sand and forgetting about my problems and acting like they aren't there, I know they are. But sometimes it is just too difficult to handle at the moment, so I jump into EQ until I am ready to face the music.

This post ended up being way longer than I intended but I just wanted to say something.