Ferrick's Thoughts and Musings

[Bunnysmack]

I suppose that I should finally write something down about myself. Given the lifestyle choices I tend to make, there is a reasonably high likelihood of finding an unexpected and untimely death. Sure, some adventurers do manage to live to a ripe old age, but, in my estimation, the lucky few who manage to do so are more the exception than the norm.

To anyone bored enough to read this in posterity, please don't think I'm writing this with a depressed or otherwise fatalistic mindset, because I'm not. I am just acknowledging the practical consideration that adventuring is an extremely dangerous occupation, and on top of that I tend to volunteer for the extra deadly opportunities like attempting to fight existential threats to a region, because I have more eagerness than sense.

On that note...Right now may be one such situation that ends with an untimely death, and it was entirely caused by my over-eagerness to try fixing a scary problem. Something is messing with my head, and it is very good at using my greatest fears, and darkest traits, to twist me into a panic, or push me toward a personality I don't want to have. Nightmares where I-, well, where I do things I don't want to do, have been coming constantly throughout the last week whenever I try to get some sleep. In more recent days I have also noticed my thoughts are...shifting. I'm thinking things that prod me toward my worst self, and are also pushing me toward paranoia of those that I should be trusting. Erratic thoughts, all in my own internal voice, but telling me things that are starkly at odds with my personal philosophy. It is terrifying to worry that one's own thoughts can't to be trusted. How do I even know what is really my own mind talking, or some external malicious force?

Thankfully, I have some advantages in facing this new problem, because I have a lot of hard-won experience in controlling my darker urges, questioning my own impulses, and enduring nightmares that cause me to wake up screaming. Fifteen years of doing so, in point of fact. Whether this condition is due to some malign will trying to tempt and torment me, or some insidious effect that makes my mind torture itself, the fact remains that dealing with these issues is just a more difficult version of the same sort of discipline I have been cultivating ever since I converted to the Forest Queen's faith. I will be careful, I will endure, and I will beat this condition, just as I have with all the other rothe shite that fell beings and their followers have afflicted me with in the past. I will not allow it to change me. I am stronger than an affliction caused from some gas that demon weeds spewed out. I need to control this problem, so I have enough of my mind left to me to help the others. In a way, I am somewhat thankful to have faced similar temptations and fears in the past: They gave me the ideal kind of practice I need to overcome my current crisis.