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[chris_eats_brains]

 The untimely death of my former gaming group's GM, Victor "Vic" Correa and my personal thoughts on the subject of suicide and a public service announcement... our first.


The following website contains important information  about suicide prevention hot lines all across the various states.

http://suicidehotlines.com/

The Nationwide Suicide Hotline USA numbers are

 1-800-784-2433 and 1-800-273-8255

and the hotline for the hearing impaired is 1-800-799-4889

Carry on bro..carry on..



http://kickedinthedicebags.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=542028

[runester]

I'm sorry for your loss. It must have taken a special courage to discuss this with us, strangers, so openly and so soon.

Thank you.

A friend of mine lost a brother to suicide. It was devastating to his siblings, parents, wife, and children. A lot of people had to live with the nagging doubt about why and was there any way they could have known or done?

That's a lot of pain and hurt to a lot of people, because of one momentary act. Ironically, the effect his suicide had on them was proportional to how much they loved and cared for him.

Thank you, again, for discussing this serious topic in a respectful and thoughtful way.

[david]

I had someone in my family commit suicide in December.  I had another member attempt it in March.

Yep, I understand.

[tashkal]

I haven't listened yet, but my condolences.

Back in college, a girl I knew from high school committed suicide. I thought I hid my own feelings fairly well, but came to find out, when I finally told my friends about it, that they had all been worried about be for that week, wondering what was going on with me. But it was one of those cases where I'd never have figured, you know?

[Michael]

I think it says a lot about both your friend ship and your character, Chris, that you made a public service announcement upon learning that a friend had taken his life. It says to me that you feel terrible about what happened and are taking any steps you can to help others who might be in the same position. I liked you before, but those few minutes of you on the mic have earned my respect.

I personally don't know anyone who has commited suicide, but I have lost a player before.

[chris_eats_brains]

Thank you for your condolences guys.

Victor was never an easy subject with me. He was eccentric and headstrong. Proud and arrogant He was the guy that told me to tell him if he was being a jerk to the group because I was the outspoken one and when I did we got into fights and arguments  about it. His imagination and campaigns were the best I have ever seen presented  from a GM bar none. But he had been GM'ing since the age of twelve to the age of thirty nine. he had 27 years of gaming experience under his belt. So as abrasive as he was we kept coming to the table because he had a gift.


A gift that masked his struggles with his weight he was easily 400 plus pounds . His disappointments with the opposite sex.  The last girl he lived with turned out to have a large drug habit and he promptly kicked her out. A He had a  family he has estranged from that he spent many a Thanksgiving alone with his  smoky grey cat Ashpool..even thought as a group some of us invited him to our places for Thanksgiving and he declined. We would invite him to movie and he didn't want to go out.

 He hated bars. He drank rum from his fridge at home when we didn't play by himself. He began to  hate Western Cinema and showed contempt for it and he wanted to watch the BBC or things he considered innovative and worth watching. And in that vein he hated and refused to play  or  GM anything Dungeons and Dragons or remotely fantasy. He remarking that those games were like training wheels, square one and why go back to it when science fiction and punching people in the face with super strength or firing a big goddamn laser was so much cooler that shattered a planet and so much more interesting and exciting.


 He hated his job and it showed and he slowly got demoted from being a mail room manager at Goldman Sachs and as people got cut or laid off to taking over their jobs and he became the model worker but he took a lot of shit. The only way he got through the week was the weekend of Saturday gaming from 2pm to 12 pm that we did. His only escape was the games. And then his cat, Ashpool his only steadfast companion of sixteen years died.

He started alienating everyone with rude behavior in the year that followed that seems to intensify, his humor got blacker until sometimes he was the only one laughing and he seems to just get angrier and angrier with each passing day. He just exuded bitterness and I felt it difficult to be around him at times. The final blow up when we all got to together at Applebee's and he blew up having to wait for a table with us and left to eat at BK's next door by myself and left us flat was the last straw for me. I told him off in an e-mail what a selfish jerk he was and how his being an asshole made the games we played less and less fun. Watching him curse out fellow players and mistreat his best friend at the table  for being late due to family problems that were obviously nothing to sneeze at was uncomfortable and it showed a lack of compassion.

I  blasted him and then blocked him from my e-mail account saying I would be off the grid for a while. Time passed and I never removed the block.

I remember he  even started to make noise about my life of having a girlfriend and having to leave early some night during a game session or arrive late with notice in advance because I was taking guitar lessons before our games. It was always stepping on a minefield with him. When I discovered I was going to be dad I don't remember even being congratulated by him now that  I think on it. He would only mentioned that now that I was someone's dad that I would not be available to play anymore.


And now what is done is done, I will never get the chance to mend fences or sit at a table with him again.
He was quite the intellectual  mind and we could talk for hours when we talked before we stopped talking altogether  about Nova the TV series,  Dune or Carl Sagan, the benefits and deficits of cloning,  modern day politics, posthumanism and human evolution.
 And what Flash Gordon would have been like had the Wachowski Brothers gotten their hands on the franchise and the Swamp Thing as written by Alan Moore who was written living piece of the swamp that fooled itself into thinking it was a scientist , when the scientist really died and it just absorbed his memories.

He always had to be boss dog, the alpha male and controlling and we lost so many players over the years due to conflict around the table that he was at the epicenter of at the time. His players accused him of cheating on rolls and killing players characters arbitrarily

Deep down there were so many walls up I couldn't get to help him, as a friend should or maybe  I  failed him in not getting him to see the walls for himself and just change his life instead of being bitter about the unfairness of it all.

[Luke]

I'm so sorry to hear that, man. 

Eck.

[Rib]

thoughts go out to you and his family and friends

[Kristin.pinky]

*Hugs*

[Psyicman]

It's never good when people take their own lifes. My condolances Chris.

[Joe]

*Hugs*

+1

[chris_eats_brains]

 We have organized and reached out to many of the fellow players who  have graced the table with Victor over the past few decades that fell into the ether.

Victor's  cremated ashes will be spread in a small park in the North Bronx  near Webster Ave and  Mosholu Parkway ( near Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo and  the Bronx Botanical Gardens respectively) that he enjoyed as a child growing up and it was a place  he would relax and come up with game ideas later on and we will have  memorial service in his honor.  Also there will a another get together of the group on the following Saturday for a another memorial tribute for those that can not make Monday's service.

And the remainder of our fellowship that has come together in the shadow of this tragedy will now exchange numbers and contact information so that none of us will be alone during any dark hour  in their lives without some lifeline  and so that we will not drift apart. And I have decided to name and dedicate game nights in his honor.  So game nights  one that day forward will become have become Victor Correa Semi Annual Game nights from now on.

[chris_eats_brains]

On Monday we got together and spread Victor's ashes in the Bronx park that he loved best then we all  ate at a Chinese buffet  and a few us saw Paranormal Activity to take our minds off the day's events. One friend of ours  Dwight blamed us all including himself for not visiting him two months ago thinking that might have made the difference( it wouldn't have he was the type to cut people off and not return calls for years when mad at somebody..they could have came to his door from experience and he would have told all to fuck off and go away) and was conspicuously absent. 

Which was good as he was threatening to punch in the face another guy who did show up. Why because of a fucking stupid argument in a game and he couldn't put that petty bullshit aside to come and pay his last respects for his friend. Who is he to judge him a false friend when the guy knew Victor for twenty years before he even knew him and that his right to see his friend and say good bye was less than his own right. It is really selfish and worse he has now cut himself off from the rest of us probably for the duration. He can toss in the wind.   I practically begged  him to show up and he put his anger first and walked away as if he was the only one in mourning. His lack of presence actually compounded the hurt  of the remainder of his friends and family who were all there... who expected him there.

This is what angers me about this scenario ... people think they have TIME to sort out things because of being young or relatively young in age. You don't. Anything can happen tomorrow and if it does you won't have that opportunity to tell that person how much they meant to you. Now is the time when it matters most. You would think a situation like this among a group pf role playing friends would have sobered people up and woken then the fuck up. We aren't the young nineteen year old pups anymore.

That and the pettiness of so and so said this in a game and now I can't forgive him. It is a  FUCKING game. and if you were friends before the game if a game ruins that ...it wasn't much of a friendship. Hence games should never ideally be friendship killers.. if they are.. then either people are taking games and the seriousness of play to a level that it shouldn't be or two maybe the parties in question ought not play at the table with each other in the interests that the friendship or maintaining it which  is far more important.

Anybody can pull a D& D  book out of their ass and plop it on the table and play it but friends are far a more precious commodity. Like a box of Devil Dogs that fell off the the delivery truck.