Requiem for a Dream

Let me just start by saying: ASMR is dead, may it rest in peace.

ASMR: A Sailor Moon Romance, was once the hub of the online Sailor Moon world, and host to literally more than 10 thousand fanfics and forums posted in by more than 13 thousand registered users...of which I was not one, TROLL even then.

I've been in a personal Sailor Moon deluge recently: Watching the PGSM (aka Sailor Moon live action) like a madwoman, d/l and karaoking Sailor Moon songs, using every ounce of analytics my brain is capable of to wring detail from every ink spot in the manga, discussing SM theory with AC, etc.

So, it all started with the fic idea that wouldn't die. It's only natural that I would turn and wish to revisit fics of old.

.............Now I am experiencing that hazy border between depression and nostalgia.
That giddy tumbling in the pit of my stomach that must come out in perverse laughter or a rush of tears. And it will....maybe not tonight, but soon, it will hit me.

I've slipped from a ledge I hadn't realized was crumbling, I'm free falling now, but the impact, however delayed, is inevitable.

It's not that the single largest archive of Sailor Moon fandom is dead. Or not that, precisely. It's that the new owner who took it after the original incarnation died in a server crash several years ago, has made it into a memorial.
As in death. Over. Done with. "There's no point now in maintaining an active archive." This was the message I encountered not only on ASMR but on almost every single site that still exists.

It makes me sad. It makes me long for the days when SM was at its peak and everything was still open to me.

Sailor Moon fandom reached its peak along with the circumstances of my life.

It's pathetic to say, but honestly true: the best times of my life were when I was 13.

At the time, I lived in one of the most beautiful places in the USA. I literally saw the ocean every day, listened to the waves at night, was awoken in the morning by the foghorn on the lighthouse a mile away. It was beautiful, peaceful, and resonated with me in a way that's difficult to describe.

I had best friends that completed and complemented me. They were interested in all the same type of things as me but in different enough specifics to be constantly expanding my tastes and world view. They were everything I could have asked for, and I seemed to be that for them as well.

I had a boy who loved me sincerely and deeply. He said I was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and he never lied. Even when I'd moved away and we no longer saw each other, the connection was there. (I broke up with her because I couldn't talk to her the way I talk to you/Nobody makes me smile the way you do etc).

I had an awesome family. My mother who was healthy, alive, and the only person in my life to truly unconditionally love me. My brothers who were the right mixture of annoying and supportive. We were close to my grandparents and my favorite Aunt&Uncle and saw them often.

I was constantly learning, loved school, did well (though it's true even then I struggled with the willpower issues that later killed my chances at university and still petrify me when I think of returning for my degree). I traveled internationally with People to People, on what remains the best trip of my life.

There was so much hope, so many dreams, so much potential as well as actual current happiness then. Every area of my life was in the black and I've never before nor since achieved that level of contentment.

But the world of Sailor Moon fandom has declined to a mere trickle. It's reached its denouement. The world no longer cares. The cost benefit of sustenance has shifted.

And now I can't help but feel like it would be cosmically appropriate for me to meet my own denouement as well.

I was 13 and the happiest I ever had been or (sadly) am likely to be. In four months I'll be 26.
Exactly twice that age.
It's a macabre and odd feeling that I've never really had before, but I just can't get it out of my head tonight that it would be appropriate if I died next year.

I don't wish that to be the case, nor would I take action to make that come about. But with the loss of all those dreams, all those lost hopes, all that missed potiential, all the subsequent buried relationships, and with so very very little to have come in to replace it....How do you replace an ocean with a tear drop and call it even?