Give it time

You'll forget how to feel before morning comes.

This is a small shack I modified and lived in for a while in a long-forgotten “Minecraft” server. At the time, my friends and I were playing a mod called “RLcraft” which removed much of the peacefulness of the game and replaced it with extremely hard earned progress over long stretches of time. Initially, you would find yourself dying over and over again, losing everything each time as your character ‘respawned’ hundreds of in-game miles from where they had been. In the regular game, your spawn is fixed, and you can retrace your steps whenever you need to. In this way, there is a sense of home, of hope, and of a world your own.

However, for us in this mod, there was never any home. If I didn’t freeze or burn to death, I often starved or dried up from salt water intake. There were only fallen villages, frozen farms, and dragons waiting to slay me. For some time, my best friend and I died repeatedly, slowly beginning to understand how to make it through a single night, completely isolated from each other. Sometimes, I would die and find myself spawning in a familiar sounding location, seeing small signs that my friend had been there before, in some past iteration. It was heart-warming, in a small way, to see his fizzled torches and the empty chests he left behind.

Once, long before I made the shack pictured above, I found myself in one of those situations. My character landed in the middle of a desolate ocean, sea serpents desperately paddling towards me with violence in mind. The only land lay far out to the North, an island with high castle walls. I instantly recognised it as the “Confession Dial” from James’ description, named in honour of a similar location featured in the “Heaven Sent” episode of Dr Who. He had spent some hours here before, stranded but oddly cradled by the empty fortress. However, as soon as the fuzzy feeling of companionship came to me, it was lost. Clambering aboard the island only revealed one thing, that this was a different Confession Dial, one miles from James’ - possibly even hours away.

The chests were full, torches lit, and the crops lay untouched. It was a frozen bastion of safety, and I could sit by the fireplace for as long as I wished, hiding from the certain death that inevitably awaited me. Now, if you have ever played this game, you might be familiar with the co-ordinates system. Usually, you can use these to find yourself and your friends, and to meet up. However, in RLcraft, these do not exist without a compass, which is very hard to craft. In other words, for as long as I hid on this island, I was entirely alone. James would not ever be able to come for me, and the surrounding sea meant I would never progress enough to survive on my own.

Sometimes wider life reminds me of this feeling, stagnation and safety. I could’ve submitted to the few pieces of food and the supply of water here, lived a long while in my lonesome castle. I could’ve brought an end to the frustrations of life, but it would have meant nothing, and the fleeting joy of playing with my friend would’ve passed me by.

So, eventually, I left the warmth and the silence, and attempted to cross the ocean. Naturally, only 2 minutes passed before I died, and all I possessed was lost.

Regardless, this story isn’t really about Minecraft and, when it is, it’s not about the Confession Dial. This story is about losing something, finding something more valuable, and then still yearning for what was lost, as an old screenshot visits you without warning, on an extremely hot day in June.

Some time between the Confession Dial and what would be known as “Time Lord Tower,” I finally made some progress by myself in the game, and built the shack presented above.

It began at night, when I fled there fearfully, escaping from spectres and banshees. It was an open mineshaft at this time, the door being a later addition of mine. I remember blocking myself in, crouching and waiting, afraid of what followed. This would be my first night in my future home, one spent peeking out at the darkness and anxiously clubbing at whatever peeked back.

I am quite sure I could tell this story over a much longer period, detailing each thought and achievement, but I feel like, for now, I want to get to the tragedy of it, the feeling that remains, even as others fade.

I stayed here for at least three real world days of playing, probably a couple more, and weeks of in-game days. What was once a mineshaft became a shack, and lights adorned its halls. I made a bed, after considerable effort to acquire wood, thanks to the mod’s punishing levelling system. I made tools, gathered ore, slew beasts, and even started a farm. The area became my kingdom, and I knew its limits well. To my North, a small hill sat, surrounded by wyverns and lava. This was the hardest boundary, but each direction had its own version. The East and South both eventually became the ocean, and the Western path was scattered with a variety of dangerous critters and ravines that I kept far away from. Alas, these boundaries mattered little. My ultimate goal was to unite with my friends: James being chief among them.

On the off chance that one of them spawned nearby, I built a tower above my shack, out of dirt. If you look at the picture, you can see its odd spiral. I dreamed of them finding me, of making this place a better home. After all, with a bed placed, I could always spawn here. In Minecraft, that’s what beds do, primarily. The days of uncertainty and insecurity were gone, and I could work towards something.

Until (you knew this was coming!), a rock golem - often spawned by mining too frequently - destroyed my bed. After a close fight, I killed it and placed my bed once again but, of course, in my rushing, I forgot to reset my spawn. It was back in the same spot, but not tied to me, and I was too busy to recall. Fast forward a few hours, and I eventually die in a minor mishap, initially unworried until I look around and find myself cast adrift in the world again. The shack was lost, and I never found it again, regardless of all my efforts.

Fast forward through days and weeks, we play on. I find a potion that teleports me to James, and we inhabit a glorious tower together, with vast farms and huge bedrooms of our own. We had almost everything we needed, even woollen clothes for winter and ice armour for hot summers.

We played for at least a real-world month, and several in-game years, most days we could.

However, when I last logged on, all alone - with others losing interest - I recall jumping around our tower and looking out at the snowy horizon, hoping to see something. Back then, I wasn’t sure what I wanted, or why I felt so crestfallen, but I think I understand now. For all I had gained, and the joy we had together as friends, I had left some part of myself in the shitty shack that sat somewhere in this world. I think it was important, not even especially relevant to the game, like some shard of hope that I tucked into bed and never retrieved.

When I am alone now, drowning in my very real stresses, in a very real world, I think of the simple smallness of what I called a little home of my own, that I cared enough about to photograph. I think of being young, and excited, and how we cut that innocence off to ride the storm of life.

I miss you, converted mineshaft, because you remind me of how it feels to believe in something, only to have it fall away. Perhaps more importantly, though, you remind me of how easily we can forget things that devastated us once, how we just let them go.

I don’t want to let go anymore, but I always will. I want to feel everything, but I think I’ll forget to want that soon enough.

I think I’ll forget being me soon, being 20 and caring about this. I think I’ll forget these pains and switch them for others. I think I’ll forget everything someday.