Facebook brings out the stalker in me, shows me my inner scanner. My ex of 7 years and I play a teeter totter game of stay together or don’t. We have always played this game, one foot in one foot out. I must either commit to loving this person till the day one of us dies or commit to never talking again; the metaphorical death. Well today is the day she makes her choice, tomorrow is the day I find out and make mine.

I suppress the urge to feed doubts and angers that I harbor. The counselor has promised that the future can only continue in the absence of these feelings. We won’t leave the hatchet half buried; we won’t even keep the hatchet. We are filled with the possibilities of what could be, no longer trapped by what has been. Yet they lurk in me, emotional zombies who take every chance to emerge, excite and panic. Problems I haven’t been able to rid myself of, grievances never to be recognized.

We broke up after a particularly hard session, where we “bared our whole soul” the counselor said, the stresses of my life coming head to head with hers and neither of us having the energy to hold on. That was almost two months ago.

Three weeks ago we got back in counseling and she started with the casual complaints, “I miss cuddling”, “I could use a back rub”, at the height she even broke down and professed to not having had any physical contact with anyone else. I took these as signs she wanted to get back together, I always do. I have been in this up and down roller coaster for going on almost 8 years and it’s been on and off, way more on than off but some hard offs.

Two weeks ago she started slapping down the hard line of not getting back together but the cuddliness jumped up. “I miss touching you” “I have been hornier than usual lately” “It’s always this time in the break up that I really miss the sex, talk about one area we never had problems.” She talks about how she has no faith in our relationship or things getting better, but she holds my hand the hour and a half round trip. She asks for endless hugs and eyes my lips till I get the signal, even when I try to play dumb. This is the part in the relationship I give in. Games of kisses on the neck during traffic turn into full on make out at red lights. She is always ready to walk away before it gets too hot. A full night worth of sexual texts follow, like clockwork.

The counselor told us, “Either forever together or forever apart but there can be no in-between.” Her determination to stay apart echoed in my heart that I was also going to lose my best friend. “I’ll call you next week and talk to you individually. I’ll call you last Sean, but were all going to be making decisions”

After last week’s session it quickly turned from tears and hard decisions to comforting embrace. We didn’t even have a playful dinner or teased each other like young love. She just cried out for me in tears and I came. I met her hug and she forced her lips onto mine. Her hot tears streamed down our faces and the game started again with new zeal.

Fierce doubts and unwavering determination gave way to fiery kisses and powerful declarations of love. We tore at each other’s clothes like a child might claw his wrapping paper on Christmas morning. We prowled around neighborhoods looking for a spot dark enough, secluded enough. Public sex wasn’t new, but never in a car…never in a graveyard. We chuckled as we said that both were on our lists of things we hadn’t done. For over an hour we celebrated life in a place of death. We laid there holding each other, crammed in our coffin of passion neither willing to let go of the other. Hours could have passed in the satisfying silence.

The rest of the night wasn’t different. Texts like we were back together, a good night call, watching the same thing on Netflix at the exact same time. The call was filled with wants: to hold, to touch, to be near, to kiss and ended with us falling asleep on the phone neither of us willing to hang up.

I told myself, don’t get your hopes up. When she has made up her mind she would rather be miserably wrong than admit defeat. You’ve never been able to compete with her ideas.


I put the hopeless in hopeless romantic.

I meant to post that last night after my phone conversation.
Turns out it was just break up sex...

I guess this is my little corner of the internet, huh? It is certainly aas good as any thing else I could imagine.

On my mind:

Well, honestly couple of worries, some goals, and some thoughts that are bouncing around in there.

These will be in no particular order as things rarely are in my brain and much like real life, I may rarely even touch upon those things.

My buddy Will (who moved away because he is smart and going to be a PhD in Physics soon) has been more or less my anchor and wall for tossing DMing ideas for my D&D team against. Lately I have been getting irritated with Wiz of the Coast in general. I know you need to publish to make money and that's why all the books and new editions come out but I want something simpler. They have yet to fulfill the promises of 4th ed while moving us on to the next big thing, they are the politicians of pen and paper.

When 4th ed came out I sang its praises and I feel like its still set up better than 3rd or 3.5, it stream lined some things and I think it did a good job of making it accessible to people new to the game. I also agree with people (now) that it takes some of the freedoms associated with D&D away. Over all, improvement for the company, and with house rules and personal preferences there wasnt a large impact on my gamers. However, I feel its gone stale.

I like my new team, I like how they set themselves up and I like how most of them are pretty archetypal. I got a guy who is probably pretty Chaotic/good or chaotic/neut, likes playing larger than average strong men who crave the glory and praises of meeting an enemy in battle and mangling him, he isnt much for talking when there could just as easily be smashing. Their rogue and team leader is clever, deceptive and opportunistic, his orders are unquestioned and his greed rarely out matches his care for his party. Lastly there is the healer. The player is a sweet kid and tries. When left to his own devices he comes up with good ideas but this is usually followed by bad choices. He picked the melee oriented healer to really boost the combat effectiveness of the team. He picked traits that filled in skill gaps in the group and even a feat on his own that has probably been one of the easier things to point to as to their success. Then he leaps into battle, not RPing as a dragoon or even a man afflicted by a jumping curse. At first I took it as flavor, "I am leaping into battle" and I liked it but as soon as I realized he was making rolls and favoring jumping to his targets vs walking I became concerned. Even with our help he still fails to master the new ability system and their place in his class and combat. This started to make me realize an underlining problem which brings us to my first actual point.

I dont think I like D&D combat anymore. He is the problem, average gaming session 5-6hrs average combat session like an hour. I have had other teams that could work their way through combat quicker but it is still a time consuming process. When I was young, giving my friends godly weapons and sending them against wave after wave of monster seemed fun, epic even. I could sprinkle in a little bit of story and as long as the team took down armies of goblins and orcs on a genocidal scale we were content. Now there is a need for action! By action I mean involvement, growth and story and combat takes away from that. The ever important quest for xp takes away from that I feel.

Anyway, Will has come up with a bare bones combat system. I am excited because its more of a reactionary system vs an action oriented system. Resources are expended and recuperated but mostly you have to think ahead and then react to the changing battle field. We are going to test it out this week some and I couldnt be more excited. If it works out well I am hoping to make a full system with the addition of my out of combat ideas.

One more thing to put on the dream website. You know, that one where your friends wrote comics that were funny and you posted your blogs and art and ideas and people from around the world came and liked them. Hell, maybe some day we'll even make some money