The LARP of Life
watch me LARP as Slutty Brienne of Tarth
When I look back at myself in the before times (the times before my decision to heal, obv) I am plagued with one burning, annoying, resounding, repeating question
“WHO IS THAT?!”
It’s not that everything about me has changed—so much hasn’t— I still love music and singing, I’m still silly and love to laugh, I can still throw ass like my life depends on it…
It’s the way I operate in the world has changed completely.
It was like I was LARPing as who I had been conditioned to be and the real me was buried so deep I couldn’t even tell they existed at all. I had lost the plot. I was so committed I fooled everyone around me and I almost fooled myself, too.
The trouble with telling a child who they are, or projecting your own expectations of them onto them, instead of simply witnessing them become, is that more often than not, you’re going to be disappointed. Well, either disappointed or lied to. And if you never see someone’s authentic self because they’re afraid to show you? Well, that’s a kind of love, but it’s not the love we all long for.
I was raised in chaos with perfection as the benchmark bestowed upon me by someone who saw me as their last shot at redemption. It was a lot of pressure and for most of my life, I did a moderately decent job of it. Whenever I slipped, though, hellfire rained down from the sky. I was held to a higher standard than everyone else around me, and that kept me striving.
To spend your life striving for someone else’s approval and happiness is a thankless endeavor. The whole point is to keep moving the goalpost. Once the person says “good job, you’ve done it,’ they lose all their power
and the power is the point.
The volume of my striving drowned out nearly any other voice I had. I had lost the plot of my own story. I was LARPing as the perfect granddaughter, the perfect care-taker, the perfect little sidekick, the perfect surrogate mother, the perfect punching bag, perfect student, perfect “natural” beauty, perfect perpetual dieter, perfect bad bitch, perfect cool girl, a straight, cis, femme, neurotypical functional member of society (if I could only learn to keep my head above water). By 23 I was so burned out I could no longer continue on.
Then everything fell apart.
Over and over, in my hour of need, I found myself alone. The people who held the love I bent-over-backwards trying to attain couldn’t be bothered. I was a burden, and asking them to love my Real was way too much of an ask.
I decided to pull away, to hibernate, to give myself a little of what I’d given so many. Every time I brought myself back to me, there was an ending (or several). Every time I said “no” I was met with resistance. It didn’t matter. I was too exhausted to LARP any more. And what a blessing that was—it lead me to the greatest feeling I’ve ever known.
Authenticity.
We come to this planet these gorgeous, amazing, complicated puzzles and it is our major purpose in each lifetime to learn as much as we can about the puzzle we inherited when our souls chose to incarnate. The better you know yourself, the better you are able to know others. The more others know the true you, the more belonging you feel. And the feeling of belonging is so healing.
LARPing through life is tempting—its what conformists call “the easy way.” You never have to challenge the status quo or ruffle any feathers, you just coast along on the life escalator, doing what the white supremacist capitalist cis hetero patriarchy tells you to, checking off milestones like a grocery list. But the end of the LARP will hit you eventually, whether you want it to or not.
Why not choose the path less trampled? Why not make it up as you go along? Why not prioritize the safety of self-love, which enables you to open your heart and your mind to growth and experience and community with people who actually get you?
Doesn’t that sound nice?
So every so often, try checking in with yourself, “Am I living authentically? Or am I just LARPing through life?”
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