Again, thank you for all the great responses! I wish I could quote and respond individually to every one of you, but that would be a post for the ages and so I'll make this a general "answer" post.
First, those videos were SOOOO cute! Not only did they make me smile, but my cat was enthralled by them. She even jumped up to the TV and started pawing it. That, too, was worth its weight in gold.
Regarding the exact circumstances of how I got kicked out of my gaming group, I'm giving the entire story as I know it, which was told to me by the one decent person in that group who doesn't give a shit about how the others dealt with me in the end. He told me beforehand that the one guy (the instigator of this whole ordeal) was going to unfriend me because I was taking too long to come back. I knew that the instigator was like that - when we were on cordial speaking terms, he told me he had about a two-week window. So when he DID unfriend me, it came as no surprise and I was genuinely cool with that. It didn't upset me in the slightest.
However, the night that the good member of the group invited me into the first party, the turd told him immediately beforehand not to invite me because it would be "awkward" (his words) to face me, specifically
because he'd unfriended me. After I joined the party, he refused to talk. The good guy kept telling him - while I was there, no less - that he didn't have to be silent. But he was, and then he left without a word after about 10 minutes.
The next night, the turd (as I'll continue calling him) berated the good guy heavily, called him a bunch of horrible things, and told him to never do that again. Mind you, the turd is 25 and the good guy is 14. Not that it matters, I'm only saying that to show how mature the younger guy is compared to the rest. It's a quality for which I greatly admire and respect him.
The very next night, the good guy once again invited me into a party with five other members of our group, including the turd and the other guy generally considered the "leader" of the group, the turd invited the other leader into a private chat. After they were done, the other leader muted me (like the turd had done) and told the rest of the party to do the same. The following night, when I wasn't around, the others in the group were told what to do about me.
Before all of that happened, there was NO animosity between any of us. We were just a casual group of people who played together whenever we were online. No expectations. That's why this whole thing is so confusing.
Strangely, I had MUCH better experiences in WoW and LotRO. I haven't played WoW since '08 and I still hear from guildmates who want me back because they said I was a good tank! I stopped playing LotRO when my PC's motherboard decided it was allergic to its chips back in '10, and yet I was considered such a good healer that THEY all want me back too. Bless their hearts, they still beg me to return after all these years. I have two lifetime memberships in that game (one for each account) so I can't imagine how many Turbine points I have stored up.
One of the big regrets I have now is that I didn't buy a good gaming PC when I was making killer bucks at my last job. Now all I have is my laptop and it can't handle much game-wise. Though I have a Steam account (it's in my profile) I can't play anything more resource-heavy than Surgeon Simulator or Kerbal Space Program. I purchased a lot of great co-op games in the Summer Sale, but I don't think I can play them without a better PC. My internet connection rocks though!
Perhaps I should try one of those heavier games to see what my laptop can really handle.
Unfortunately, all I have that's reliable is XBL, and I echo the sentiments of some of you when you say how bad many people on XBL can be. lol When I told my brother all the shit I went through in GTAO, he told me that he didn't run into that many dickheads on PSN, or, at the very least, people who pulled the type of crap that's regularly seen in GTAO on XBL.
You know something else I just remembered about my gaming group? Outside of GTAO, the ONLY game they play is CoD. I don't even own a CoD game. So maybe it's for the best. And to answer CannibalCorpses' question above, I TOTALLY forgot that the guy who first unfriended me in my gaming group was crushing on me pretty hard back in December and January! Holy crap... that little detail completely slipped my mind. I didn't reciprocate his advances because, well, I'm not into guys. I even TOLD him that back in January!
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About the job, I won't go into much detail about it here. My employer tried to deny me unemployment benefits when I applied for them, saying that I lost my job due to disciplinary action. You can't get UIB if you're to blame for the loss of your job. I appealed after the state's UI office sent me an email questionnaire to tell my side of the story. They overturned their decision within 12 hours of my response and granted me benefits, meaning that the state agreed that I wasn't responsible for the firing. Not only did I detail everything that happened to me (with dates because I have a bizarrely accurate memory for them) but I also included the name and phone number of my state disability rep, and I offered to sign a release form to give them access to my rep's records because they're otherwise protected under HIPAA's privacy laws.
I wouldn't take my employer to court though. See, I worked for the county and so it was a government job. I was a career counselor and case manager for a federal grant program (WIA) that assists unemployed and underemployed workers with training funds so they can enhance their marketability to get back into gainful employment. I loved every day of that job when I met with clients and watched them become successful. Helping others is something that makes me happier than anything else. Except for the coworker who made my professional life a living hell, I looked forward to going to work every day. It was like having a seven-day weekend.
And one more thing - about my bipolar disorder, people who meet me in real life are shocked when (or if) they find out that I have it. I've heard a lot of misinformed comments from others like, "but you're so normal!" as if those of us with mental illnesses are supposed to stand out in a civilized crowd. A vast majority of the time I'm perfectly stable because I stay on my meds. That hasn't been the case since April of last year though, as I've swung between hypomanic and severe depression with alarming regularity. We're trying to find a better mix of meds that will even me out, but the problem is that I waited 15 years after my diagnosis to begin meds, and so my condition worsened to a such a degree that I'm one of the more difficult people to treat.
With all that, this post became ridiculously long anyway!
Time to end it here...
