Because the person I somehow want to thank is Normanitee. This digital avatar who doesn’t even exist, but does, because she is breathes through me. Norm is the nexus where Warcraft is not just a game. Where mechanics meet identity, where human connections that exist outside the game take action within digital spaces. I can be Narci, or even my real life identity online without her, but I cannot be Norm without being with this character. She’s the focal point where fun isn’t just what’s fun right now, time frittered in “a game”, but fun is a process. Fun can be a journey undertaken together, with uphill slogs and mile markers. There are times when you just grit your teeth and do this thing because you’re doing it together, whether it be together with your friends, or together with this pixelated cow who is somehow my friend, as well. She is a part of me that, through divorce with the rest of me, I can love myself the way I love others. Love isn’t love until it is shared, until it is actioned, given away and accepted back. It makes sense, perhaps, that I externalize this part of myself into an isolated, separate personality, item, locus. That it is far enough away from the me who is just me, indivisible, that I can respond to her the way I wish I could respond to myself. So really, when I say thank you to Norm for waiting for me, I mean thank you to myself, for giving myself time to grow. When I think that Norm has found a home, I know I mean I am more comfortable in my own skin, as well. And when I realized that Norm had found a way to move forward, what I know is that I, too, the rest of me, will find my way into a future I still haven’t imagined. Hi, me. I’ve missed you.