Personally I gave up on connecting with people.

My best relationship was with my birth maternal grandfather. He was like my equivalent to an Uncle Iroh; cool, accomplished, wise, patient, and caring. If there was anything that would improve any negative day I was experiencing, it could be found from him. I don’t remember a single negative experience from him.

He had one of those rare unisex names, and I always used to feel awkward that my adoptive mother (who was also his adoptive sister via their own mother my “birth” maternal great grandmother, err, his adoptive mother and my adoptive mother’s birth mother, not sure how to label that) took advantage of that and named me after him in the renaming process despite being his granddaughter, but after a childhood spent with him, not a single part of me questions that choice. I currently reside in his old home, where occasionally I make him breakfast forgetting he is gone and proceed to have a literal toast to him and eat it in his name upon correcting myself. That’s how much of an impact he had.

My adoptive mother, second-oldest birth sibling, BF, and two friends I made who were the children of family friends of my mother also serve as honorable mentions.

I have a really cute cat that actually shows affection and meows really cute

My brother but to be fair he is someone everyone loves. Hes like the favorite family member of my wifes even including hers.

I left home at 18 for a job and it was like I ceased to exist to anyone that I’d loved before then. My old friends and my family completely seemed to forget about me.

So ten years on, I finally have had enough of this loneliness and boredom, so I searched through a reddit LFG for DnD5e online through Roll20 since I’d played it for a little while with coworkers and understood it well enough. Joined a group with a rigorous entry questionnaire and met a bunch of others that have been through thick and thin together now.

But in that group, one of the people was somewhat outward with their own troubled past that matched mine in a lot of ways. From there we got talking, and we started to become friends. And through a few games and a now a handful of years, they are one of the - if not the - most important people in my life.

They help validate my struggles and offer solutions when I want them, and they come to me when they need the same. I moved across the country to be closer to them and a few others from the DnD group and it’s just really been life changing for me in no small words. I started therapy, I stopped being suicidal, I’ve grown so so much, and I’ve learned depths of love that I’ve never encountered before. I do have a crush on my friend and they know, but we’re entirely platonic and as close as we can be (I think I’m just Demi sexual?? I just fall in love with people close to me even if it’s not romantic).

From how they describe their end, they’ve experienced a lot of the same things and a lot of the same personal growth. Neither of us would be who we are today without one another.

Drag’s dragon. Drag had a really horrible morning and still feels awful, but drag’s dragon and friends calmed drag down.