Some days I let the monstre run through the motions and retreat into the little girl I've kept so hidden in my head this quarter century.
Today, I am small and grief-stricken.
The monstre knows that all this is unproductive, that instead I should be making plans and executing them, head high, fists forward.
Uncertainty is a levels 5-7 dungeons and dragon beast and I've been playing in the 11+ dungeons** since my first 300baud modem with the yellowing beige rubber phone cradle.
So the monstre is executing plans, yellow mane curling viciously in the wind, accepting lunch dates and pulling automated humour from office-talk memory.
The monstre is looking forward to ski trips in march and improved cardio and is putting off the urge to think about why I haven't better furnished my appartment, as though I had never really planned to stay.
And whilst the monstre runs on, tinny midi music of various near-forgotten ROcky themes echoing in the foreground
This little grief stricken girl tries not to think at all until the pain is merely a swallowed lump, and waking up alone without his smell to wrap the morning in sweet fog becomes less of a nightmare and returns to the usual get-up-eat-orange-drink-tea-wash-hair-go-to-work routine.
I tell myself that this is not weakness, and that if this is truth then in less than a year it will have been nothing but an excercise in personal strength training.
But sometimes it becomes very difficult to live my life looking forward, always working towards that next milestone, when all I really want sometimes is to be living it quietly, carefully, curled up on that golden couch with his ribs warming my back more than the electric radiators ever could.
I tell myself that this is no tragedy. This is no tragedy. There are so many wonderful things here, this is no tragedy.
Sitting on his knees on the golden couch, all too conscious of This Is The Last Time
Such brave thoughts were lost in the storm of "Why nots" and "but I'm a figher... why can't I fight this?"
And then the storm was lost to grief and tears, and the cold light of Thursday morning.
** This unseasonal AD&D reference was brought to you by the following e-mail sent to the Penultimate Mailing List this morning, courtesy of mists.
"
http://blanchard.virtualave.net/war/dndstats.html
My D&D stats:
Str: 6
Int: 11
Wis: 17
Dex: 14
Con: 10
Chr: 17
Not sure about the charisma but maybe they include mailing list infamy. ;)
The part that flatters me most, though, is that onceuponatime when we finally abandoned dice-rolling for points-assigning these are essentially the stats I used to choose for my thieves, bards, wizards and druids. I'm my own D&D hero, me. Does this count as achieving personal goals?
Now allsIgottago is choose me a class, cuz I sure as hell ain't got none... :D"