Thrown under the bus.

The last several weeks have been an exercise in extreme patience and making adjustments.

First, and most importantly I'm dealing with my own personal issues.  The first in my fear that I've done the proverbial "falling off the wagon" because it seems that now, more than ever, I'm relying on my bottle of Valium to get me through the tough times.  I've had my chronic nightmares return, but instead of being chased by the undead like when I was a kid, now I'm having the same nightmare every night of being prepared for death and being cut into small pieces.  It's a gruesome nightmare, I'm laying on a surgical table in a hospital gown and they bring down a what seems like a sort of chain link set of lasers over my body that cuts it into a fine mesh.  Right before I fall apart, they place a bag over my body so that I don't fall to pieces all over the place.  Right before I die in the dream, I hear them tell me I won't feel anything and I see a hypodermic needle filled with a yellow solution injected into what's left of my arm, the bag is closed up over my head and I die, then I wake up.  Somehow I think it's related to my addictions and how I'm gimping by on valium to hold myself together.  Something isn't right there, but for the last month, that's the only dream I've had.  I wake up terrified usually with anxiety through the roof.

After that gruesome nightmare night after night, I decided to tackle what was hitting my triggers to make me use. Stress is my number one, bar none trigger.  If I feel things are out of my control or if I feel betrayed or any other negative emotion, I jump into my pill bottle.  It's not good and I know it.  But watching Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab made me think about a few things...here, have a look, but my point is at 3 minutes 52 seconds into the clip:



Put succinctly, when I have people hurt me or hurt people around me, I shut down.  I've always lived with the fact that if people love me, they're going to hurt me.  That's it, end of story for me, so when I get bombarded with nothing but negatives from people who "supposedly" were supporting me, I want away from them as soon as possible.  Which leads us to the second point:

Second, the game I pay a goodly sum to play and relax every month has become a nightmare.  I'm serious, an out and out nightmare.  Everywhere I turn, it can't get much worse.  My druid class along with every other class has been re-written, ruined or worse.  Everywhere I've turned for advice has always had negativity laced with it and even though I'm trying hard, what I'm doing just doesn't seem like it's enough but I figured that I'd battle through and come out the other side just fine.

But, you knew the other shoe had to drop.  The one guy who I THOUGHT had my back threw me under the proverbial bus and didn't even bother to say he was sorry while another guy decided to put the bus in reverse and drive it over me again.  I've been asking for WEEKS of my GM and Raid Leader when raid season would start every single time a guild member would ask me and I never once got an answer.  The closest thing to an answer I ever got was "The second week of January."  With no firm date stated whatsoever, I told my sweet guildies, who look to me for guidance and support, that I didn't know what was happening quite yet.  It's the truth, even with what they were batting around in our officer forums, there was no clear answer in sight.

So, yesterday afternoon, at seeing that my guild master had only posted a strategy and NO clear date as to when it would be happening, not a "tomorrow night" not jack noodle, I put together a meeting for the people I look after the closest in the raid, my healers.

What do you think happened?  The son of a bitch threw me under the bus, changed his post in our officer forums, then politely allowed the raid leader to make me feel like shit as he's putting together raid invites and pressuring ME and telling me "you knew about this" when clearly I didn't, interrupting the healing meeting I had set up and was in the process of, pressuring me to end my meeting early so they could go raid.  I didn't even get through half of what needed to be talked about on my team and I was being harassed, none too kindly to finish so they could go raid, taking me along for the sole reason that I'm an officer AND I'm one of about 4 healers who are prepared to go.

They didn't slap a date on their plan to raid, all of a sudden from struggling through heroic dungeons, we're supposed to go raid?  I thought it was rude, horrid and completely spineless for them to change the rules of the game until AFTER I had turned my back.  They KNEW what I had planned, instead, they stabbed me in the back and left me to bleed.  Changing the original post from just a raid strat to look at, to a raid composition to be taken in that night is not only foul but downright underhanded.

What's worse?  Oh yes, it's going to get worse folks, because I don't see it getting any better, our wonderful raid leader, the guy I termed as "the tenderheart in a tough guy suit" proceeded to tell the entire guild that how he makes raids is that he's taking people he enjoys playing with, which means his brothers.  Sure, he went out on the limb and said there were a lot of people that deserved to go but weren't, and even went so far as to tell everyone that he was tired of taking people who couldn't carry their weight.  Now that last part struck me as something ironic because it's a brand new expansion, people are re-learning classes that have been skewed, in some cases to extremes almost unrecognizable from what we experienced last expansion, and he has the nerve to tell everyone that, sorry, you're not going, he's only taking people he knows can deliver and likes to play with.  Ok, I can go the fact that wiping isn't any fun and that we'd all like to go with a group that can succeed and we did agree that we weren't carrying people anymore, but the audacity on how he decided on the people who WOULD progress really got my goat.  People he LIKES to play with.  Not who could do the job best, but who he LIKED.  Now, when you're in a leadership position, you don't have much goddamn choice who you like to play with, especially when it's progression on the line for an entire guild made up of over 260 individual characters belonging to around 70-80 people.  He actually is handpicking 10 out of 80 only because he likes to play with them.  Not because they're good at their jobs, but because he plays to relax and he's not going to give the time of day to people he doesn't think can win a fight.  Last time I checked, we all had to learn at some point and with the new Cataclysm changes, I don't see how anyone can go in and think they're invincible.  The worst part of it all, and the part that disgusted me most is that my guild master didn't say a word, he just let that raid leader mow down the entire guild's morale and seemed as if he didn't give shit one and was behind it all the way.

I played my part in all of this, I agreed with them that we shouldn't have to carry people, but I didn't think it meant at the expense of the other folks who knew what they were doing and COULD do their jobs right.  I thought we were going to construct a team of 25 solid players, not screw everyone else over because we didn't "like" them!  I'm just aghast.  I empowered that self-centered son of a bitch in the hopes I could make a stronger team made up of more than just HIS family.  I naively thought that he had everyone's best interest at heart like I did, only to find out, and KP told me, he did, he warned me, but I didn't listen, and sure enough, all of the people I like playing with got left out in the cold, and so would I had the previous healing druid not taken ill and burnt out.  Now I wish he hadn't and hope he gets well soon enough to take my place because I don't want it.

And to think, I actually wanted to go with them at one point not too long ago.  I feel ashamed of myself.  I was being prideful all in the name of progressing and winning fights, trying to hone my toon into something I could be proud of, only to find that guess what, my happiness is being achieved at the expense of 70 other people who aren't being supported and who apparently aren't given a damn about at the highest levels.

When the announcement went down in Vent after MY healing meeting was carefully planned then rudely rushed and interrupted, that they KNEW was planned for a specific date and a specific time, disregarding me and my team completely, they threw their raid together at the last minute.

After everyone was told basically "tough shit," my screen literally lit up so brightly in pink I went close to blind.  I was the one being sworn at, yelled at, cussed out, hollered at and it was so bad that I began to cry horribly.  What's worse is that the people yelling to me didn't even bother to point their aggression at those who deserved it.  I'm not the one who told them that they weren't desired as a part of a team, I am not the one who told them that they'd have to start their own raid with no support.  Yet I'm the one being cried to because no one has the guts to tell those two fellows that they're out of line and that everyone is hurt.

No, I'm the one who took the full brunt of it.  Hell, my raid leader thinks it's ok to get away with arrogance with no repercussion when I'm the one who suffers the greatest from every destructive thing he does.  When people feel left out or ignored, which is more often than I can count and has happened countless times over the last two years, they come cry to me, when the truth is that those two men that I did hold in respect couldn't have given a damn in the first place whether the rest of the people who look to them for leadership suffer.  And I'm the one that's supposed to deflect and delegate when I'm the only one everyone trusts.  Now I realize why I'm the only one in the officer corps that my guildies trust.  I'm the only one that deserves it because I'm the only one who cares about each and every one of them.

Oh yes, I KNEW the raid was going to happen...riiiiiight.  Liars.  The both of them.  They dismissed my efforts and walked over me to achieve their own goals.  I'm disgusted with both of them right now and  I'm so ashamed I supported them.

You know, I hope they just gkick me.  I'd be happier that way and I'd have an insta-guild of my own because there are but few who wouldn't follow me.

I'm tired of being thrown under the bus and being treated as a mere afterthought.  I've been through that all of my life and I'm sick and tired of it.  I'm tired of being brushed off, abused and treated horribly.  Worse, is that I can't stand seeing all of the people I like to play with get left on the sidelines.  The group I was in I couldn't stand because they weren't people I liked to play with, but I sucked it up and did my job, crying the entire time.

After two hours of wiping, gee, surprising isn't it from a group of folks still struggling through heroics, I went to talk to the two guys I like to play with most.  They wouldn't even talk to me because they view me as one of the people who betrayed them when I only went to do my job.  I logged out disgusted, ashamed and worst of all, with no desire to ever play WoW again.

I built a team, one that believed in each other, and all it took were a couple of guys to destroy it all in a matter of seconds.

Boys, thanks for throwing me under the bus.  My addiction trigger really enjoyed it.