Friday evening, June 29th, 2012.  Around 20:00 hours PST.  Staring the dark dragon in his ugly, mutated face.  Shaking.  Nervous.  Scared.  Anxious.

Heroic Ultraxion.  Sure, one of the easier encounters in Dragon Soul on Heroic mode.  Heroic nonetheless.  One mistake could wipe the raid.  And it did.

I died.  Several times.  Fading light required a heroic will, and then Hour of Twilight came and I missed my assignment.  Splat.

Death is jarring to me, even though I know it isn’t permanent.  It stings, especially if I make a mistake that affects the outcome of people I care about.  For example, I was in a BG the other night, and I Disengaged off a cliff and died.  I laughed, it was so ridiculous.  I didn’t have any real attachment to my activity, I was just killing some time and looking for easy XP.

Heroic Ultraxion, however, involved 9 of my guild members, my friends.  They depended on near-perfect execution.  5 times we wiped.  During progression, pretty normal.  And I’m sure there were more wipes before I was there.  But one wipe, while I *was* there, was my fault.  I went splat.  I got a brez and the rezzer went splat right after for some reason.  We missed the kill by 1 Million HP or so, around 1%.

One.  Percent.

We tried one more time, and I had near perfect execution, despite my nerves and shaking.  I missed not one fading light.  However, I hit Dispersion early and was about to go splat to Hour of Twilight.  But I called it out.

I’m not sure what saved me.  Maybe it was fate.  I think it was a Pain Suppression.  But I lived, barely.  We secured the kill.  Heroic Ultraxion fell to Eff the Ineffable.  And in that moment, I became heroic.  I had killed a few Firelands bosses on Heroic with some of the Twittermumble crew, but never a current raid boss.

Until Friday.

It was such an amazing feeling, one I have experienced more recently in my life.  The feeling of accomplishment, of vindication, of overcoming adversity.  As I overcome more adversity in my mind, I am able to overcome more adversity in my actions, including in-game.  Doing things I never expected I would be able to do.  Such an amazing feeling.

Am I heroic?  I’m getting there.