I’m posting this early so I have a clearer schedule and because when the actual date comes I will be a wreck. I’ve informed friends I won’t really be responsive.
February 8th, 2014. My best friend Mat died. I will never look at this time of the year the same as others – people ramping up for romance and valentines. No.
I remember how excited we were to be in the beta for FFXIV, and there are countless stupid stories I could tell, including the ballad of ‘I didn’t know there was an NPC to boost you to 30 so we sat in Toto Rak from 24 til 30 and then I found it and he was so mad I could hear the veins popping’. We both got the game (I lvl’d WHM, he lvl’d BLM) and we played together on Behemoth (I was Vaine Kirschell, he was Senel Coolidge, his favourite Tales character – I’m still mad it wasn’t a monk!!!). I thought my world ended when Mat died suddenly. Not knowing where he was for five days, not knowing I’d been the last person to speak to him, and when I did find out, months of guilt that my advice had been ‘sleep it off, it sounds like flu’. It hadn’t been flu, it had been a genetic heart condition that sadly killed his cousin a few months later atop it.
But I’m glad I came back to a game we both genuinely loved and got to meet all these wonderful people that made my grey world brighter, more colourful. I am… thankful, grateful for all these friendships you’ve been kind enough to make with me. I hope we continue to have fun together, so I can gather up a thousand stories and have them ready to tell Mat whenever we meet again.
Mat; you’re always never far from my mind. Hope you’re doing alright.
Love; that idiot who genuinely did kick the dynamite in the zombies chest in RE6 because they didn’t know it was dynamite. Ooops.
XxxxxX
PS: HE WASN’T A MONK. FFS.
I love you, bestie. <3