Goodbye my spec

I am retribution... I will not respec... maybe if I can I will dual spec prot but my guild will never ever see me as a tank again. When I was leveling my paladin I told Jaer that when I was a tank on raids I would make sure that there was always a place for him on the raids and now that will not happen. His girlfriend is the guild's main tank and the truth is not just that she is better than me but that I know that I could never be a consistently perfect tank, I am a good tank and I could be a periodically sublime one but never a perfect one. It costs me a lot to admit this, it also costs me a lot to let go of my dream of tanking for Jaer but it happened. I do like ret but it's not like... my first real tanking experience was a PuG group, a pick up group made up of random players, and we ran a dungeon called the Nexus and it was sublime, everything was perfect and all the pieces fell into place. I have yet to have a sublime moment with my new spec and I worry that I will not. Secretly I feel I have to make mt spec work because there is no way I can change back and I worry that I will never have a sublime moment with my paladin anymore.

Recently a druid tank joined the guild and another guild leader tried tanking for the first time and they talked about tanking, every word of those discussions was a pain in my heart because they made me feel like a failure as a player. Jaer has told me that it was not because I was a bad tank that he recommended a respec but I can't help but feel like I did fail as a tank every time they talk about it. This is me though. I know that Jaer is my friend and that he only wants what is best for me, I do the same for him but I am having trouble saying goodbye to my spec. I wish I was not having problems but I am, I was so proud as a tank and now I sort of feel somehow less as DPS. I try telling myself I will rock as DPS but it's not the same as knowing that I have rocked as a tank, maybe I need to test out my spec in a team environment, maybe I am just a stupid glory hog and I liked being a tank because good tanks get glory, whatever it is talk of tanking makes me feel bad inside and I have no idea how to express it.

Kind of silly to get worked up about a video game though. I would argues though that it's not the game but a perceived loss of social status that is bothering me but I don't know if that is just a justification. Yesterday I joined my guildies on a low level dungeon run to help the new tank and as much as I wanted to be part of the fun I felt sort of... seeing my friend really enjoying tanking reminded me of the good times I had, times that I would never have again. Moreover I don't think that my new spec will really get me more invites to guild events, DPS is dime a dozen and I am sure they know more than enough people that inviting me will not be a priority. I really have no clue why I respecced and the only think I know is that I do not want to respec back, no matter how sad not being prot makes me sometimes.

Arena of Anguish

Last night Jaer invited me to do a group quest with him and I discovered he had told the team that I was one of his guild's best DPS. That filled me with pride because he had never seen me as ret and he accepted that I would be good DPS on faith. Also he boosted my confidence by showing me some DPS meters in whisper and she showed me that I was doing well and he made sure I understood that. Yesterday and the conversations I have been having with him recently have made my feel much better about his guild. I felt isolated and now it's been confirmed that nobody ever meant to make me feel like an outsider. Even though we don't talk all the time like we once did Jaer and I have regained some of the closeness that we lost when guild drama threatened to tear the guild apart. I also realized that I was unfair with Jaer, I know that we will be friends for a long time to come and that sometimes we may not hang out together much and sometimes we will hang out more and that's just how things are.