Closure

It has been over 10 years since the person so many of us knew as Findra passed away. I haven’t spoken much about them or the circumstances of this horrible, tragic event, which has filled me with so many complex emotions for so long, and these feelings have been destroying me. I know that Findra would not want me to be suffering in this way.

In real life, Findra was a man named Chris, who was the most amazing, gentle, wonderful person I ever knew. He lived an incredibly rich and full life. His career was software engineering, but that only seems like it was incidental.

He had an incredible array of passions. He spent many years as a dolphin trainer. He was a pilot of small aircraft. He loved movies and television and food (both cooking and eating) and music and comics. He loved hiking and nature and he especially loved one particularly large laurel tree. He had dozens if not hundreds of friends, and he saw the beauty in everyone and everything, and above all else just wanted everyone to be happy.

The really deeply tragic, awful, horrible thing is that he had so much love for everyone, and sometimes this love did not manifest in ways that were appropriate or healthy, ways which harmed others in ways he absolutely did not intend.

And one of these ways caught up with him, and when it was discovered, he was suddenly facing massive legal problems, and the possibility of losing everyone and everything around him, and it was just too much for him to bear, and the world lost a beautiful, wonderful person.

There is a big hole left behind, and I don’t know how it can ever be filled.

Chris was such a complicated person, wrapped around such a simple philosophy: love everyone and everything, experience life to its fullest, and share as much as possible with as many people as he could. He always did his best to try to see the best in everyone, and wanted everyone to be their best selves.

For the past ten years I’ve been so angry at him, for what he did to others and what he enabled others to do, and for how he lifted me up so high only to drop me on the ground from this great height. It’s been so difficult to forgive him for what he did, to all the people he’s unintentionally hurt, just by trying to love them as best as he could. And I know he wouldn’t want me to be suffering this way, and I miss him so much.

I wish society were able to forgive people for their wrongs, that justice were restorative and not vindictive, that everyone could fill their hearts with love and forgiveness.

Chris was an amazing person and I love him so much.

There is a hole in the world left behind by him and his many brilliant ideas, the dozen or so (or more) alts that he had, most forgotten. Most people only knew him as Findra, and even the character of Findra had so many different sides that he only showed to specific people. I think everyone has a different memory of what Findra looked like, of what the character’s personality quirks were, of what they were happy and sad and awkward about. And so many of the other characters he brought to life had such an amazing variety of concepts, some completely otherworldly and incomprehensible, in what I can only describe as an “eldritch delight.“ He had so many stories inside of him that he wanted to tell through play and interaction, and those are lost forever.

There is a hole in the world, and a hole in my heart, and for so long I’ve been filling that hole with anger and frustration and confusion and pain and grief, and it’s been tearing me up inside. Now I only want to fill it with love and kindness and forgiveness and acceptance of what happened, and what can never be changed despite all the ways I wish things could have gone differently.

I don’t know if the hole can ever be filled. But I’d like to try to fill it with good things, all the same.

Chris, I miss you, I love you, I forgive you. I hope everyone else can find it in their hearts to forgive you too. And I am so deeply, terribly sorry for everything that happened, and I hope that after everything you’re at peace. I’m glad to have known you and your love, complex and simple as it was.

Goodbye, Christopher Sturtivant. May your memory forever be a blessing.

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