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[Ginga]

You last visited: 09-04-2010 at 09:21 PM

My goodness, and even at that time I remember it had been a while. I was into Stargate by that time! Sheesh sheesh sheesh...

My friend has been watching random episodes of Voyager for the first time, and I've joined her for quite a few of them. It's been years since I sat down and watched the later seasons (my favorite seasons!) but seeing those doofballs in their flappy nacelle ship brought me right back to being 16, watching reruns every Sunday with my friend, carrying my love for Janeway every darn place I went like some kind of happy-go-lucky mirror universe Atlas.

I just turned 28 a few weekends ago. I always get the happy birthday e-mails from 5MV; really, I look forward to them every year. Of course one of my first thoughts while being pummeled with Voyager memories was of this place. I think I always felt a little out my league here, wanting so badly to be one of the rad dudes that gets their name in a fiver, feeling my age compared to all these grown-up college-age folks who were studying important things and building their real lives. But even feeling that way, I was welcomed. Even feeling like some dumb kid stumbling around an adult party, I had a place here (I still remember how overjoyed I felt seeing my name in a fiver for the first time.)

16 was hard. When I first came here, it was in the bar none toughest period of my life to date (this had to have been immediately obvious to anyone with access to my Livejournal). I was so screwed up, and the things happening around me were so screwed up, but when I'd successfully made it through each day, I could come here to feel less screwed up. I could read fivers and actually laugh, talk to people afterwards, just plain have a nice time. I could do that at a time when, literally, my reality had significantly altered and I had no choice but to struggle through processing it. I was not a happy kid, but I could come here at the end of each day and feel, well, a little less unhappy.

There's a lot I don't remember of that time, honestly (that's the fun of clinical depression - the swiss cheese holes where memories should be!) I remember excising 5MV and Voyager from my life because it was causing too much pain to remember being 16 and messed up. I remember saying things to people that weren't nice. I remember being angry, all the time.

Luckily it's a lot easier now to look back and remember the things that were good, the things that lifted me up at a time when I so desperately needed any lift I could get. It's a lot easier to fondly watch Janeway wrecking shit with phaser rifles and pounding back coffee like it won't exist tomorrow. It's a lot easier to come here, read some top 10 lists again, and say thanks, to everyone who was there at that time, for welcoming me inside this (rather subdued, actually) crazy house. (A crazy house full of eerily calm math and science nerds...)

I hope everyone is doing well. I wish I could name names, but there's that whole swiss cheese thing again.