I had a day off today, awesome. I saw my mom and it was great seeing her. I do remember how sad I would get when I didn't see her every day. It really felt like the end of an era living with my mom, the end of my childhood I think. Even though I was still living with my mom, I would say that my childhood ended there. Not in the age sense, but in the responsibilities sense. You see, even though I am 23 and I was living with my mom, I was not responsible for absolutely everything. My laundry got done occasionally, food was bought for me, bills were paid for me (though I did pay some board), and things like waking up for work my mom would usually do that. She still does on the phone, but I know that she isn't there to physically wake me up. Maybe not childhood then, I might have overexaggerated that term. It's more like my real adulthood has started. My real childhood likely ended long ago, just before I started high school. That was my real childhood. Once high-school started, I lost a lot of the innocence that makes up my childhood.
I will always say it that middle-school was one of the best two years of my whole life, even though I know fine well that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. But a lot of it really was amazing. I've likely talked about this in a previous log, but I'm gonna talk about it again. School experience in middle-school was some of the best I ever had, I was almost always excited to go to school and my mom will tell you that for a fact. Because I had a rough time in primary-school, this felt like a serious step up. People were genuinely nice and fun and just paid attention to me. I just expressed who I actually was, instead of primary-school where I tried to hide who I was. I felt very free and I can just remember middle-school as a literally warm, sunny environment. One of my earliest memories is being in a PE lesson. I think it was the first or second week of me going there. But, it was such a warm day, the sunset lit up the playground walls so warmly. I wasn't all too interested in the basketball part, but all was in my head was that it was the last lesson of the day and I can go home after. That doesn't quite sound nice, "wanting to go home", but that was a specific early memory where I was still adjusting to the place. Later on I genuinely sometimes didn't want to go home. It felt sad having to go back home when all my friends were here. I used to hang around with one kid for the entire two years, we were like side kicks, seriously. We would talk all the time in the hall, we sat next to each other during form (the classroom you attend before you start any lessons for the day for like 15 min), we played games in the playground and eventually on the field, we tried so hard to sit next to each other in class. It was epic. So epic, in fact, that I think it helped me branch out in my confidence, because no matter what I did or what happened I could always fall back on my side kick friend.
I obviously made some mistakes. One kid who had learning disabilities annoyed me while we were on the field playing football. So, I ran as fast as I could up to him and pushed him as hard as I could. He stumbled forward so violently as his head knocked back from the force. I immediately regretted it. I carried him to the school building, he said he was gonna tell a teacher. He was crying and I was telling him "no, don't tell a teacher, it's okay". But in my head, I subconsciously thought that yeah, he probably should tell a teacher, that was a horrible thing I did. And I still remember it. It was just cruel and unneeded. He was walking away from me before I pushed him, he was no threat whatsoever to me. I was just bitter for whatever reason and acted out of cruelty. I'll never forget that because he never deserved it. He's fine now, actually, I think he was fine 30 minutes later. It just stuck with me because he was helpless. He couldn't fight, he wasn't a threat to literally anyone, and he was just being cheeky probably. But that's no reason to make a kid with learning disabilities cry from physical pain. Anyway, enough said. I've learned from it, it has stuck with me to this day (over 11 years later) and I now know how it feels. He's probably forgotten all about it by now!
In one week and two days, I have a calendar reminder that reads "Do you feel better about your new house? (4 months after moving)" and I will answer it now. Yes, I am. I am very comfortable at the moment emotionally, much so compared to when I moved in. I remember being nervous about driving my car! Now it's just part of my life. When I first got it, I was scared, nervous for the future. I never noticed when the shift was when I finally became confident that it was just part of my day, but you never really do because it's always a gradual fade into normalcy. You don't wake up one day and go from 100% nervous to 0% nervous. It's a gradual slope where you think less and less about it. Same for my house, same for not being with my mom. I cried my eyes out the first few nights in this house because I wasn't with my mom. Now I am used to it, I cope a lot better. Obviously I still get sad when she leaves, I was a bit sad when she left today. But I don't crumble when she leaves, I acknowledge that it's a bit sad and then move on.
Anyway, aside from all that malarky, I finally have a finished build of my map. It is playable and all the walls and rooms (aside from half of the first floor) are accessible. No props yet, no doors, nothing apart from meshes and a few spawn locations. I've decided to make the game a hostage game mode. I would have loved to make it a defuse game mode, but that unfortunately would give the building high traffic areas and low traffic areas. I want people to use the whole map to its fullest. I was considering three bombsites, but apparently it doesn't work too well. Maybe I could make it work with two sites? But it will inevitably make some corridors pointless.