The company and secrets we keep.

My thoughts are a dissarayed jumble, there is so many things I want to get off my chest, most of which do not involve WoW.

I guess I start at the begining.

I've been an online gamer for nearly 15 years now, starting my hobby in various MUD's, Diablo, the general slew of terrible games that each taught me more about how I wanted to conduct myself and be portrayed then actual gameplay.

The first game I lived/died for was Everquest, it was impossibly hard, and I vastly overestimated my ability to play the game, as a 16-17 year old who knew just enough to get into trouble, but too little to actually succeed. I took various stints thru many other titles, picking up better aptitude, deeper theorycrafting skills, and overall developed into a "good" gamer. I went back and took EQ by storm, got into the raiding scene just barely in time for WoW to pull the wool over my eyes.

I've been playing WoW almost exclusively since release, with a few distractions I elected to throw up during a few short breaks, working at temporary jobs just to get by, living without many frills. More or less content with my station in life, happy enough to just keep skating by.

Last May everything changed. My mother and stepfather both died in a car accident 1 year and 3 days ago. I was crushed, destroyed, I cancelled my accounts, packed up some clothes and ran home to be with my brother and sisters, of which I am the oldest. I didnt play anything outside of old console games for the better part of 6 months. I made some amazing friends, met the girl of my dreams, and more or less drank myself into a stupor. I had a wake up call that my drinking was spiraling out of control when I came to from a blackout asleep behind the wheel 200 miles from home.

So I pulled back, I got in touch with some old WoW friends, turned out the guild they were in had a casual tank spot and I had some desire to play my warrior. I registered back and played hard getting back up to speed. After a month I was tanking in T5 content, I never looked back.

I've been with my current guild for just around 4 months now, I am one of our 4 tanks and as far as I know, a valued asset. As the anniversary of my mother's death approached, I was anxious, despite an entire year having passed, it is something I don't think I will ever truly get over. On Friday, I got a phone call from one of my aunts telling me that my grandfather had been in intensive care for several weeks, and they planned to pull the plug on Saturday.

They pulled the plug on Saturday at about lunchtime, contrary to what the doctors had said, he managed to hang on for a while, and he passed away early Sunday morning, the same day as my mom passed away last year. It has been a week of extreme highs and lows - thinking he was going to pull through, then the crushing pain of losing yet another of the few people I care about.

It has always been so easy to run away into drinking, gaming, drugs, anything to distract me from reality, and as I have always lived with depression, each blow rattles me to the core. As I mourn the loss of everyone around me, I also mourn the loss of my attachment to the world around me.

I drove home yesterday, feeling burnt out and tired. I got home and logged on to raid, got several friendly comforting tells and messages and felt a little better. I still learn to deal with things as they come, and while everyone tells me it will make me stronger, I just get more bitter.

I don't normally talk about anything this near and dear to me, as pretending to ignore it is far easier, but I figure I might as well try something different, something has to change.

Take this for what it is worth, it is simply the truth as I feel.