under my skin

SL, Second Life, provides the perfect getaway staycation from CL, Covid Life, though some people seem to have let it seep in here too. Not me though, and anyway, vampires, which I am, don’t get Covid. Of course, I suppose some of us vamps might have rabies, so we’re not so squeaky clean, although, I am very particular about my fangs being well-brushed and razor sharp. I like a good clean puncture wound, none of your shredding and tearing by me.

I just realised I been here over 12 years. 12 years! Actually nearly 13 now. That makes me quite elderly in SL terms, here before mesh, even before sculpties, when it was just a totally prim-world and we didn’t look quite as lifelike as we can look now. I still have my original avi too secreted away in my inventory, which is basically not much different from me now, although now I hope I am much upgraded. I know it might seem really boring to some to just remain pretty much the same even though I’ve experimented too on and off, not to mention my mermaid form. I’ve messed around with being a tree and a panther, to name just two non-human shapes, but I always come back to me. What does that say about me? That I’m boring? Or perhaps I’m lucky that from early on I been comfortable in my own ‘skin’. 

 

Maybe that’s had something to do with my longevity here, why I’ve made it this far and this long and still in one piece, relatively anyway. Emotionally it’s been a roller-coaster up until recent years as if you’re not careful SL can have a habit of getting under your skin and not always being the escape from real turmoils you thought.

I’ve definitely outlasted many of my peers who’ve either left or dumped their original avi for a new one. Also those who drop in once in an SL moon, as in rarely. Sometimes I’ll log in to find a message from some long lost name on my friends list from years ago, and presumably I must still be on theirs. They are like ghost messages really, as though they’ve been left on the answerphone from another time and hadn’t been erased. They all mostly always say a similar thing, like, “are you still playing here?”, or, “just thought I’d join SL again”, and even when I reply rarely do I ever hear from them again.

You need to be a bit schizophrenic to be here, to add another you to the many you’s out in RL. Like for me, I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a student, a volunteer, a model, a photographer, a waitress and probably more, so my SL avi becomes just another facet, one always with blue hair, but one totally down to me and not at the whim of others or society.

© Anan Eebus