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+---- Thread: A Raven's Broken Wing - Repaired (/showthread.php?tid=3375)
A Raven's Broken Wing - Repaired - White_Rain - 01-17-2014
The Raven Republic.
Strong warriors.
Helpers.
Friends...
Everything I needed most... to feel like I was myself again.
We fight a war, a Verdict War, between three factions - Sirius Corporation, Venide, and the EverGreen Family.
But I myself fight a war... where I get emotionally injured, again and again. It won't stop...
Ravens are more than just faceless killers sent to bring an ordinary man's doom. We Ravens have lives behind our murderous metal machines.
This is mine. The one you all have deeply, deeply impacted... more than you know.
--------------------------------
A RAVEN'S BROKEN WING - REPAIRED
By White_Rain
--------------------------------
They often say life is good. They've had nothing bad really bring them down. They got to experience the good in life - the things people get to truly cherish throughout their lives. They have good families, good friends...
good lives.
But life is only good for a few. I try to be the best I can be, and my life has turned out to be a disaster. I tried to be there for everyone, and yet whatever controls my life has no pity for me.
I've grown with a family full of tension issues between one another, almost always in poverty. When we moved to Georgia, we hadn't the best of things - a small home, a car, decent amount of food, fairly good clothing... Sure, we did have a PlayStation 2 around its time of release, back when that thing was first coming out and was going to be the BEST console ever, and GameBoy Advances at the height of their popularity. Sure, we managed to get by. But we were still poor. We hadn't much for luxury other than a PS2, which I only began playing a month after we got it, thus beginning my time as a gamer. Life seemed okay around this time, but it only got worse.
We eventually had to move back to Maine, where I was born, and live with my dad's biological father, whose house was full of cigarette smoke and body odor lingering in the air. That grandfather of mine, when we arrived, never bathed and always smoked indoors. Did I ever tell you I had asthma, and cigarette smoke was one of the WORST triggers? He was also an alcoholic - I spent most of my time with him out of my sight, as my parents were forcing me to. His room had pictures of topless women all around the walls, and it was... well, for me, it wasn't disgusting, as I'm not a prude. It was... rather intriguing, what this all was. Regardless, I questioned none of it. Eventually, after enough time, we got him to start bathing - every Monday. The B.O. was still in the air, and it still wasn't pleasant, but I had gotten used to the smell, though I was always happy to get outside. I got some of my favorite toys at this time - a Spiderman glove that could actually shoot webs (or water or 2 types of darts - foam or suction cup), an entire set of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...
We moved out of THERE to an old friend of my dad's. His house was a lot more well-kempt and there was a lot of fun to be had. Still, we were still pretty poor, and most of our fun didn't even come from our family's things, but his. After a long time of living in what seemed like paradise in comparison to my grandfather's house, we were eventually invited by my sister, Tara, to move with HER family down to Kentucky. We did, and I met my new nephew for the first time. I played with him a lot, and we became best friends, most certainly. Though, conflict between my mom and Tara caused us to move AGAIN, to a different home after arrangements were made with a landowner. The house was still pretty nice, and this was where a great deal of fun was had but the misery began before I knew it.
The only person I ever really chilled with was my nephew. I got him interested in Transformers and we'd often compare and play with our separate collections - mine reaching over 50 by a certain point. He wasn't at my house for long, and most of my family shooed me away, so I was... rather lonely. Sure, I had friends in school, but I never got to see them outside of school unless at a special event by coincidence. Loneliness can cause some SEVERE mental issues in a human being, mostly social disorders. It made my Asperger's Syndrome worse. Asperger's Syndrome is a syndrome closely related to autism - I'm incredibly smart in comparison to kids my age, but I'm terrible at socializing. Hence why I never had many friends, despite being the kindest person in a place mostly full of prejudiced brutes.
I was mostly stuck to video games, my favorite being the Sonic the Hedgehog series for some reason, maybe being the first video game I had ever seen. I loved Transformers games almost as much, and I had already known about Armored Core back in Georgia, but finally got to play it in Kentucky - Master of Arena, to be exact. I wasn't half bad, and I LOVED the concept of the game. I was just afraid by some of the missions' difficulty ratings, so I never got that far. I used a mediumweight setup with colors and name based on Optimus Prime, the iconic leader of the Autobots from the Transformers series. Typically using a machine gun, I mowed down opponents by sheer fire speed and ammo, along with the occasional missile or chain gun or something.
Regardless, the solace in the fun times ended. My grandfather from my mother's side, whom I called "Buddy" and loved very much, was hospitalized by a stroke and eventually died of cancer. I was struck with grief. The death of my grandfather caused us to move back up north to help our grandmother around the house with him gone. We knew how much we would miss - I especially missed my nephew, whose name is Ayden. And he especially missed me - the little guy CRIED upon hearing I left... and I felt too much sorrow. I nearly blamed myself for it, but I never let that get to me. Regardless, life continued to get weirder and weirder. Eventually, we moved once more to the apartment I live in now, and HERE'S where the suffering truly begins...
Do I dare say it?
I don't know how many people will believe me, or even care, but I might as well try...
My mom and dad started arguing more often than ever - daily, it began to feel like. There was even a day where they argued from sun-up to sun-down. I might be exaggerating, but something like that did happen. My dad allegedly cheated on my mom, though to this very day I can't tell if that was true or not. They separated, which put me in total heartbreak. I missed my dad... My mom was going crazy, verbally abusing me and my sisters Leslie and McKenzie. She's gotten somewhat better, and is happy that she finally divorced my dad, but she still verbally abuses us just because we point out something she does wrong or question her awfully-questionable authority.
My sisters, the ones mentioned just up above, they were rotten. They did everything they could to belittle me for every mistake I made, minor or major, blowing things way out of proportion and trying to make me feel like I was nothing more than a complete idiot. They abused me, annoyed me, just as much as my mother did, and yet they say they're better than my mom. They contradict themselves, are hypocrites, and they wear me down far more than any normal bully ever has. This isn't just "typical brother bashing on sisters due to sibling rivalry", this is me genuinely despising the people they are because, put short, they are AWFUL people.
Oh, not to mention, it's been five years since we've moved in and I'm STILL isolated to myself. Nobody seems to care about my existence... I wouldn't be surprised if that were true, given the way they always ignored me in the past while I was speaking. I was never of any importance to my siblings... or anyone else, for that matter, so it felt like.
In this day & age, I have few friends IRL that I truly consider fully friends. One of them tried to kill me (and failed)...
But during this time, my liking for Armored Core grew and grew. I searched all over the internet, scouring as many webpages as I could for information on the series. What was From Software up to now? What games were made that I don't know about? What's their price at GameStop? I got Armored Core 2 a while after these questions were asked, for a REALLY cheap price. It's been a while, and I now have V, Verdict Day, 3, and Nexus as well as 2. That's 5 AC games that can keep me occupied. I loved the series right to death. It became my new favorite game series.
Years went by after I got 2, and I eventually found this wonderful website called...
RAVEN REPUBLIC.
I saw this website, the MAIN website, and enjoyed what content it had to offer. Months after, I stumbled upon the forums. Nervous to join, I avoided it... until September 17th, 2013.
I had already visited community-driven websites before - a few Wikias, I should say - and didn't like them. Either the moderators were terrible sleazebags or the community was just completely dead because of the tiny fanbase. I found these forums, and...
...
I was happy. I hadn't really been happy... in a long time.
...
...
You guys changed my life.
I lived in complete suffering for a grand part of my life - my entire world view was shattered before my eyes in an instant, like being stabbed and the knife being yanked right out just after I was stabbed. I sat, with all the troubles and worries in my life... contemplating suicide, or running away from home, or something completely ridiculous driven by nothing but pure, unadulterated depression by a broken home and a family that never figured out how to BE a family. But I was led to this website, and...
I never felt so accepted in my whole life. I had never felt... people APPRECIATING my existence like this, or at all for the longest time. I had never felt so WELCOME to ANYTHING in my entire life.
You guys, or at least arrui, anticipated my arrival in Verdict Day, as if I actually mattered... I felt like I was important, for once...
You guys let me join your team when I got Verdict Day, and did everything you could to help me - give me advice, send me money, accompany me on missions so I could get new parts...
You guys paid attention to some of the things I liked to do in spare time, mixing music on Audacity...
The things I did, I never thought so many people would actually think they mattered... I never knew so many people would actually care that I existed...
And I...
I finally found a place...
a place that I could call home.
My wing, as a Raven... was no longer broken. I could fly again! It was healed... by feeling like I was important to people... like I was in a true family.
I could feel myself being myself again... I finally felt hope. I finally felt... what a true family is supposed to be.
This... this is family.
This is where my heart is.
This is home.
This...
Thanks to you all...
This forum...
is MY Raven's Nest.