[VERIFIED] 'SET ME FREE' by Efext
Hey. I don’t open up very much online, or in-person for that matter. Since really getting into dedicated playing, I’ve met a ton of awesome people, but I haven’t really connected with them on any deep level. Since I started really getting involved with this community, I’ve lost a lot. During quarantine, I lost my home. My dad moved to Colorado, I briefly moved in with my then-girlfriend and then we went to college. As everything moved online and people went away, I lost all of my deeper connections I had made during high school aside from her. I’ve really struggled a lot since then socially, and only two new people who really, really understood me came into my life – Zoe, who I love and plan to spend my life with, and Efext. I’ll be calling him Will for the remainder of this, because that’s how I knew him. I’m sharing this so people can maybe understand why I’m verifying this level. For a time, I was closer to Will than I was to anyone, even Zoe. There was a point in time, now very distant, where I had loved him. We met in August of 2022, only for a few days, but they were some of the most special days of my life. I felt like my time, affection, and (yes) boundaries were really valued. The morning before he left, I almost told him I loved him. I didn’t. I won’t ever know to what extent my feelings were reciprocated. I’m at a place in my life where I am okay with that now. I bring this all up because after our visit, Will stopped talking to me. I felt like I was left in the dark. I felt alone. The number of people I talked with who “understood” me went from three to two. I desperately hoped for some kind of resolution, but it didn’t come. Eventually Zoe stopped talking to me too. I was down to one person. For some reason, Zoe still decided to meet up as planned a while before this, and we reconnected in Winter of 2022. She visited, and within one day I was dating my best friend of years. I don’t know if that would’ve happened without Will and the confidence I gained from what we had done together. Despite how hard everything was for me during this three month period, I would do all of it again to get to the point I’m at with Zoe and where I am now.
All of this happened before Zoe opened up about how the start of her own visit with Will went. I fully believed Zoe (of course) and stood with her – but it was a nail in the coffin of our friendship with Will. I felt this time, very permanently, that my close connections had gone down to two forever. Eventually, she brought it to Twitter along with Kyoto and their own experiences. If you’ve read this far, I imagine you know what happened. I still stand with them – but it cemented the second time I felt I was losing my former best friend. It was rough, I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t – but Zoe was my top priority, as she always will be. Unless Zoe saw fit, Will was no longer a part of my life.
Then they made up.
Maybe a month later, we were talking again. Our old group chat with me, Zoe, Will, and my ex was alive again. We talked pretty often and called a few times. Before this, I confirmed Will was getting genuine help to prevent something bad happening again, and we resolved a lot of things – the first time he stopped talking to me, thoughts on the past, etc. I got a lot of closure from that whole situation and I’m thankful for that. On Oct 19th, he sent his last message in our group chat. Then, radio silence for two weeks. Eventually, my ex reached out to him on Snapchat, and Will sent a “final message ever” to us. We’re some of the people mentioned in SET ME FREE’s YouTube description.
All of this is to say that verifying this level really isn’t about the level itself. It’s incredible – definitely Will’s best work – but I don’t really care about that. I care about the conclusive, final, ultimate loss of one of my last and most important friends. I want my name there. Maybe it’s selfish to make this about me – I don’t really care. I can’t keep refusing to take up space. I don’t fully understand why verifying this level matters so much to me even with everything I’ve laid out, but it did from the second I saw it released. When I saw that Browar and Blank had hours of head start that day and that I didn’t have a chance at verifying, I broke down in tears. Saying that “I verified” this project is infinitely more important to me than it should be, and definitely more than I’ve conveyed here. Even with everything I said, I don’t think I’ve conveyed the emotional depth of what we had and I don’t think that’s even appropriate in a public-facing description. It’s okay. I think we both know. Browar and Blank stepped back to let me do this first. I don’t think I can ever explain just how important their kindness was to me. I hope that verifying this will somehow provide closure on everything I’ve been feeling since Will left. It probably won’t, though. I expect my memories of this person who will never think of me again to stick in my head for a good while.