All right, so I don't know how to explain it, but I died. I mean, I did know through high school and university that I was not precisely normal. Thank god. Normal is not something I ever aspire to be. Extraordinary, that is something worth being. I dance on tables, now and then, just to remind myself of this.

Granted, things started to fall apart some after a couple of bad sexual experiences - a rape, and a 'date-rape-did-I-say-no-or-not.' I had trouble sleeping because I kept having these nightmares...

But I really had no idea. You would think that I would have clued in when a roleplaying game seemed utterly right and real life seemed to be missing pieces. When it seemed like the real me wouldn't come out of my mouth anymore, but only came through the keyboard. Well, work with what you have, I thought. I built up an online world. I wrote policies and I made an area of it just the way I would like an area of it to be. I met a great guy that did these things with me, with whom I really, really clicked. I figured we would end up in the same nursing home.

Or perhaps I might have clued in when, after dating a pretty cool guy in real life, I ended up marrying him and couldn't quite take it seriously. I mean, white dress, champagne, marital sex (mnnnnnnnn) okay. But it seemed unreal, like a role I was dragged into playing some of the time.

Gradually it did start to sink in. I wanted to do some interesting career things. But I ended up in kind of a dumpy data management job. I suddenly owned a house, which felt like the absolute end of the life I thought I was having. I was free! I was powerful! Why did I have a mortgage?!

Why was I missing huge chunks of my day?

These were bad questions to ask. I'd always had a voice in my head - Lemarath. A great dragon. She even came onto the game with me. I used to joke about how I would sit in a room on a game with no one else around and talk to my dragon. But it wasn't a joke; I really would.

But dimly, somewhere, I started to feel the empty spaces in my life inside me. And these spaces seemed to have other voices in them.

Fuck! I mean, I'm relatively smart. I love to do things. Introspection was not my strong suit, so I braced myself to buck up and ignore this stupid sense. But things happened. The worst thing that happened was that I - but not me! - gave up the leadership of the area of the game that was my favourite thing to do. I saw myself doing it but I wanted to stop it the whole time. I was extremely angry. I felt I'd been gypped. I had no idea who had done that to me - I tried blaming the great guy I loved, I tried blaming the person who ran the area after me. But I knew that they weren't the right targets, somewhere.

I went for a promotion to a job that would absolutely ensure that I would be way too busy to worry about some dumb old game where I'd been forced, somehow, to quit the part I most liked.

The interview was a disaster. I still got the job, but something about the interview really, really bothered me. Normally, I'm at my best in pressure situations. This time I wasn't. I wasn't answering. The answers weren't right. I came out of the interview feeling like shit.

And then I saw that my character, Shandra, my presence online was slated for death. By me! But I hadn't planned it. I felt more and more like I was somehow contained, like the dream everyone has where you have to run but you can't, you're all covered in goo or something.