Heartbroken.

Mat cries by the mailbox, broken hearted

Sometimes Mat gets a bad feeling. Maybe it comes from listening to what's not said more than to what is. There is a skip, a missed beat, in a conversation, things that are revealed later that feel...well, just not right. The feeling started last evening, with one of those "Can I tell you something?" types of conversations. Unraveling and over analyzing gets Mat no where, so she just chalked it up to just honest communication. (Postscript: That's exactly what it turned out to be -all is fine, in fact, great.)

However, lately she's been feeling that messages in bottles have come back broken. Flares have fizzled. Trying desperately not to need reassurance or be perceived as needy, she shrugged off the feeling all day. The normal Tuesday patch was something to look forward to, although it meant she wouldn't see her long-time friend in the morning. Running to the mailbox in the afternoon, she was heartbroken to find a Dear Mat letter. Well, it wasn't really a "let's just be friends" letter, but more of a "I'll be in the real world for awhile, and hope you take care..." sort of thing. Now, Mat's human understands the real world. Very much so. The human has a pretty big project to stare down the month of March, as well as attend to personal and professional projects. It was going to take some discipline and planning to include Mataoka in the plans, but big plans they are indeed. Mat wants to get into raiding, sharpen her skills, and gain respect of the Alliance of Whisperwind.

Coincidentally, while Mat's human was trying to sort out some writing questions, this article popped up:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/02/27/all-the-worlds-a-stage-whats-my-motivation/

Mat was in a bit of a slump there, and lack of confidence is NOT attractive. So she reflected: what is her motivation? What does she want? And the answer came to her clearly: there is no time worth spending in this world without friendship, laughter, sharing success and failures.

Mat wants to tell her friend: She will deeply, profoundly miss you while you live more in the RW than Azeroth. Her one little level 85 self was honored to know one great player who was a mage, priest, rogue, druid and the rest. Who's going to make her laugh by turning into a plant, or port her to Dal with the fastest ports ever? Who's going to give her a leap of faith when she feels hopeless? Who's going to get overly excited and toss knives like the rogue whenever he saw her? No one else. You all brought fun, gifts, talents, advice and friendship that is rarely matched in the real world. All the healing rain in the world isn't going to wash this away for awhile. Please come back when you can, and know you are in Mat's thoughts and healing wishes in realm and real time.