The most fun part of self-inflicted trauma is when you manage to completely
forget you ever did it in the first place.

This is a little post about how I spent Christmas Eve.

My roommate had to work, and I had literally nothing to do. Normally, I
"celebrate" the holiday by reading any one of several well-loved, favorite
books.

But I didn't want to do that this year, because I've been reading a lot,
lately, and because I was in the middle of reading something else. And if I've
learned anything over the years, it's that interrupting one book for another
is a sure-fire way to guarantee I'll never go back to, or remember, the first
book.

So I went and watched some anime, instead. This proved to be a bad idea. Or,
perhaps more technically, a good idea, badly executed.

What I watched was the first half of Sword Art Online II. The season about
"Gun Gale Online", and so on.

I'd seen it before, right after it came out, which is several years ago, now.
And while there were one or two bits I remembered, like Sinon's PTSD and
firearm phobia, most of it had pretty well faded.

This turned out to be really suboptimal. The fact that I didn't remember most
of it, I mean.

Because, towards the end of the arc, there's a bit where Sinon and Kirito have
a long conversation about how you live with yourself after killing someone. It
is, in the parlance of the Internet, rife with feels.

It is also a scene that I had managed to completely forget in the intervening
years, most likely on purpose. That scene, that conversation, is...
uncomfortably relatable. Hits much too close to home.

I'm not going to spell it out, or draw you a map. If you're using Gopher, I
suspect you're bright enough to read between the lines.

So, yeah, I accidentally re-opened some pretty deep scars, while home alone on
Christmas Eve. By watching what is otherwise a pretty fluffy anime series. It
was... every bit as fun as you might infer, from the description.

Worst. Christmas. Ever.

--lkosov, who, unfortunately, has not spent the *entirety* of his adult life
as a sysadmin, more's the pity :(