Why I don't just play games for my husband.

Day 23: I can't breathe, but I can play. 

As I write this sentence it is officially two months since I discovered my best friend was keeping secrets.  I made the choice shortly thereafter to begin this experiment, 100 days of gaming, and chose to play my way through the unknown.

As a successful professional woman, I spend my life devoted to my family, and dedicated to my career.  With so many delicate plates to keep spinning it is a wonder I find time for games and blogging.  Admittedly, I am slowly becoming accustomed to the sound of breaking porcelain.  Some have recently questioned if the only reason I play games is to keep my husband happy?  The truth is that some days I play out of obligation, some days I play just for him, other days I cannot wait to abandon RL and have the only challenge in my world for a few hours to move past a goblin or an orc.

Yoga with my adorable kids.

Yoga in spite of my kids. 

 Yesterday was a long day that began at 4am after only a few hours of restless sleep.  After teaching from 7:30am -2pm,  I went to a grueling yoga class, had yoga playtime with the kiddos and then waited for my Diablo date.  Even though I have the flu, and worked all day, and the kids were sleeping I stayed awake.  But why? 

My motives for playing are not really as important as the fact that when I play I feel joy.  Often when we play there are these moments of perfect synchronicity that have nothing to do with skill and everything to do with friendship.  I find these connections harder to identify in RL but so easy to stumble across in fantasy realms. 

Even when glowing arrows are gone, and we are exploring a terrain, our characters never stop moving along side-by-side without us ever speaking a word in RL.  A new boss appears in the screen and I realize I am holding my breathe, and then look to my left and realize he is doing the same (btw Blizzard graphics are so effing beautiful).  The exhilaration of fighting past a cache of demons and laughing raucously and not even having to look to know he is grinning too.

These moments are why I play.

Even though two months have passed, the betrayal is so visceral that I feel like I am suffocating.  All the time I feel like I cannot breathe, but the chasm created by all the lies becomes less daunting each time I pick up my controller.