Reddish Musings

So, up there with abortion in the ranks of issues that will continue to divide Americans on "moral" grounds yet will never actually be cemented in stone (because then nobody would come out to vote), is gay marriage. Some people are for it (equal rights!) some people are against it (one man, one woman!), and each have their logical and illogical reasons backing them up.

But the phrase that gets tossed around a little too much for my comfort is that we need to "protect" marriage. The sanctity of marriage is under attack! One man, one woman! O noes!

Let's look at this, for a moment. Why do people start attacks and thus wage wars? There are normally a couple reasons: The Attackers want to destroy it, or the Attackers want to take over it.

In the first scenario, it's pretty easy to wave that off as nonsense. The LGBT community (and however many other letters they've added lately - first the rainbow, now the alphabet. Share, people!) has little interest overall in wiping out marriage as an institution. There are those who hold that marriage should not be a government thing, that it should be put back into the hands of religions and privately dealt with so as to remove this whole debacle anyway, but the majority of people are not saying they want it gone for good. I mean, think about it - if they wanted to wipe out marriage, they wouldn't be petitioning to be granted the right to GET married.

That would be like wanting to destroy the Christian church by reading the Bible and paying tithes every Sunday. Given that "Marriage" isn't even an actual location or group of people, there's no way that infiltration would do any good, even if that was their goal.

So, no, they aren't out to destroy it.

Now, are they out to take it over? Again, let's think about this: In the history of wars, overtaking a country normally had one of two or three outcomes. Either the people who used to live there were destroyed and the Attackers take over, or the people are permitted to stay there, either to be assimilated into the new society or to pay tribute to remain as they were.

Let's talk about the first idea: Do the Gays want to storm in, wipe out heterosexual marriages, and claim marriage as a Homosexual-Only institution? No. That's what Heterosexual fundamentalists are doing right now. Most couples just want the right to be married, regardless of whether they're in the current phase of their relationships to do so RIGHT NOW. They want the tax breaks, the hospital visitation, the next of kin rights. They want adoptions, they want to live a normal, happy, monogamous life. That should make opponents of the "Homosexual Agenda" happy, since they normally point to how adulterous and dishonest the dating gay world can be. How dare they want to settle down and be boring like the rest of us? Buh?

So, that leaves the other option: Are the homosexuals attacking marriage in order to rule over it? Seeing that I have heard no legislative ideas that require heterosexual couples already married or seeking marriage licenses to pay tributes to the Gay Marriage Czars, I think not. Nor do they really seem to be hunting down straight couples in order to sway them to the gay persuasion.

Some war. It's really more like immigration. They want IN to the marriage world, not to take over it. They want to function in its society, legally, and get all of the perks of participating in it as the current citizens get. Civil Unions are really like visas, but marriage would be akin to a permanent citizenship being granted. And those gays living together? Well, I guess they're the illegals? It's a faulty metaphor, I'll agree, but it works for a little bit.

You can oppose to gay marriage all you like, and I can't do anything to stop you. That's your right, and I'm not going to challenge it. All I ask is this - whose marriage would really be endangered by the ability of some couple somewhere in the country to get married? Who would really be at threat in that scenario? The couples who can participate in society and have to deal with Homeowner's Associations and taxation and insurance policies just like everyone else? The kids who are adopted into loving homes instead of being left floating around in the foster system? YOUR marriage?

In short, my opinion still stays the same, albeit somewhat trite and abrasive: If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one. But no gay man or woman will be knocking down your door to take your wedding rings away from you anytime soon. So chill out.

I've been through quite a few experiences in my day. I went through almost all of my high school years glued to my laptop, playing World of Warcraft and chatting my days away with people from all over the world. It was nice, even if it was a tad bit... well, the word fake doesn't seem right. It wasn't fake, not to me, not then. They were real people, and we were real friends who cared about each other. I still keep in contact with a few of them, but now I know them by their real names instead of their characters. So we are now "real" friends, I suppose. I still haven't met them, though, so that makes them still pretty "imaginary" to those not in the know.

But anyway. In the midst of the chatting, relationships grew. Good friendships, and more. I had a few... oy, it seems almost silly to refer to them as "boyfriends" now, but I do have to admit that I felt more than a little bit in love with them at the time. So the term remains.

It was normally a gradual process - we would be in the same game channel, forum, or something, and make the same jokes. We would "get" each other. For one, it was just a lust of the moment. Someone was just paying attention to me, and I relished in it. We had somewhat similar tastes in music and movies and stuff, but there was nothing really cementing a relationship other than the fact that we were both looking for something. I'll refer to him as M.

M was Canadian, and quite a few years older than me. He also suffered from bipolar disorder, or something close to manic depression. He refused to take his medicines, and thus would be in slumps for days, treating me affectionately, and then ignoring my conversations entirely. I was a youth (15 or 16, he was 22), struggling to deal with life as an outcast, as someone different, and I realized pretty soon into it that I couldn't deal with his problems and shoulder my own. I spoke to a mutual friend about the problem, and he later found out that I had mentioned the medicines to her. That erupted in a pretty awkward, hurtful discussion after I had already broken things off with him.

A mistake, entirely. I knew that. But while I had been dealing with the burden of his depression and wondering if this was all I was meant for, I ran into another soul. This, this was N. N was also older than me - I was 16 at this point, and he was 20. A trend is emerging, no?

N was sweet. He was a Christian, something I had been lacking in M. He liked the same music as me, and some of the same books, albeit only on my "Christian" side, as I sometimes call it. I couldn't really share in my other indulgences with him, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, heavy metal rock music, and enjoying a good dirty joke here or there. In fact, he was kind of Puritan-esque, I would later come to realize. He was very sweet, though.

He had helped me through the ordeal with M, and before I knew it, we were writing stories together and flirting back and forth all the time. We ended up deciding to try long-distance dating. He sent me text messages full of funny stuff. We talked on the phone all the time. It was amazing. I felt cared about, instead of just someone who happened to be there.

Then things got weird. It's hard to really describe the devolution of this relationship, being that you have to understand my game world a little for it to make sense. I played World of Warcraft, on the Horde, on an RP server. This means that we all played the game for the sake of the story, building relationships between characters and players, in and out of character, building upon plots and ideas while enjoying the quest mechanics set forth in the game.

N had originally played on the Alliance. But he had switched over, and started a Horde character to pal around with all of us, not just me. We both had different characters that took part in different storylines, with little reason to overlap much. We were still in contact with each other often, just interacting with different people most of the time.

He started wanting to know who I was talking to, and what we were saying, and what was going on, and what it all meant. He also started to become suspicious of me, I think. There is a phenomenon of those who engage in Roleplaying on the internet to also "cyber," through the voice of either their character or themselves, which basically means write out sex back and forth.

Now that I've been in a real-life relationship, I understand how kind of hokey it is, but trust me - when you're lonely, it's tempting to seek that kind of contact, that want, that value, from anything.

He started, not pointedly, asking after where I was. My character had begun dating, it's true. It was purely an IC (in-character, meaning only between our characters) relationship, and the fellow manning the character she had a total crush on was sweet, but not someone I knew really well. It was an innocent love story.

N also came to visit, once. He came down around the Christmas time, stayed in a hotel nearby, and I chauffered him around for about a week. It was a nice visit - he was chubby and cute and geeky, and he was a gentleman. Too much of one, really. After being so lonely, I was waiting for someone to come sweep me off my feet. To hold me, to tell me how beautiful I was, despite my weight problem, and to kiss me and treat me like a Queen.

He treated me like a delicate object he had no idea how to handle, so he best not try at all. Hugs were hard to get out of him, and they were chaste. There was one night where we cuddled on the couch by the fireplace, but that was it. So, nice, but... underwhelming, after all of the buildup of having a REAL BOYFRIEND who was coming to VISIT ME.

When the questions about where I was and who I was with began to become too much, I finally broke down. I called things off with him a month or two after his visit, which admittedly, he had paid for (we had paid for his hotel room). I felt bad about it, but it just wasn't working. He lived across the country from me, he was paranoid and suspicious, and it was driving me nuts. He even had the gall to ask how I felt about C, the boy who controlled my character's then-fiance.

Well, maybe gall isn't the right word. I had started to fall for C. He was sweet and kind, and slow to anger. He had a sense of humor and humility about him. He was also a broken human being, and God help me, I had the urge to Mother the hell out of him and save him from this cruel world.

C was my first love. To this day, I still wish nothing but the best for him, but I couldn't help him. He was also 20 (lol) and I was 17 I think around this point. We were together for 8 months. I remember that one. It started a while after I broke things off with N, but probably not long enough for his liking. *shrug*. I was young, my heart went where it pleased, and as a side note - N had been cybering with HIS character's WIFE behind my back since basically he started his character. He also tried to whip his e-penis out when one of my friend's characters was around him. While we were dating, both of these things. So, sexual repression and paranoia, much? ANYWAY. C.

My family went on a vacation around Yellowstone, and we took him with us, stayed in a big condo we rented for a week. I kissed him on that trip, tired of waiting for the right moment. Unfortunately, it scared him. He was too... I don't know. Damaged. My heart still breaks thinking about him. I have no romantic intentions towards him anymore, I just want someone to come rescue him from the doldrums that he lives in.

That leaves us finally with K, whose name also starts with C, but for ease of distinguishing, we will call him K. After things got too depressing with C - he was moving with his family, he was unwilling or unable to enroll back in school, but he didn't want to move nearer to me to start a job or education, so we were stuck still in a long-distance tango, and I realized that I just couldn't fix it for him. I was miserable, he was miserable, and it just... wasn't working.

He quit playing the game, so I hadn't seen him, his character with mine basically dropped off the face of the planet, so I just went back to questing solo and trying to remain friendly with everyone else I knew.

There was K. He had always been a member of the channels I frequented. He was surly. He was mean, in a funny way, and everyone loved to hate him. He was the one who poked fights on the forums just to watch people start squawking. It was fun for him.

Also, he was C's best friend before C moved. I met him when we picked C up for that trip. Just the once. He, also, was damaged.

I could write pages and pages on each of these people's roles in my life. K was probably the most frustrating of all of them, the final straw, if you will. He and I were like yin and yang. Where he was surly and pessimistic, I was full of e-hearts (<3) for everyone. Where he liked cussing and flaming, I liked smoothing things over with people. Naturally, attraction was inevitable.

We flirted up a storm. He would show me kindness he showed nobody else in that world of his. I would poke and tease him, and he would take it with a patience, again, nobody else got to see. It sort of evolved into that whole "But you don't know the real side of him!" thing.

It ended basically as soon as it began. He seems to follow this strange cycle of chasing me. We would flirt, we would discuss, we would stay up late chatting... until we decided to go for being boyfriend/girlfriend. Then we would promptly forget how to behave with one another. He would go stale and surly in discussions, then mix that with being overly caring and boyfriend-like. It was as though we were both trying way too hard, and it just strangled the thing.

Eventually, I decided against the ordeal, 3 months or so into it, and we called it quits. We didn't talk much for a while, as was my custom with people I had cut ties with. Then, months later, presents show up for my birthday, from him, and I start talking to him again. Same ol' thing. We discuss, we flirt, we tease, we banter. Things are good. I offer to come visit, thinking things are maybe going to be good this time.

I pay $900 for a trip to Mid-Western America, to be tugged back and forth with misleading clues for what felt like an eternity shoved into a week's timespan. I was told he didn't want to be in a relationship, because, for real, he said this: "Bros before hoes," in response to being friends with C, when months before, in our FIRST attempt, he had said "Forget C, I want this." When I visited, he had really stopped talking much to C, due to his moving, and their drifting apart.

Then he would hold me, we would sit close, he would wrap his arm around me and treat me like a girlfriend, only to tell me again he didn't want anything. He said he was attracted to me, but then he wasn't interested in the long-distance, and back and forth and back and forth.

I left heartbroken and miserable, uncertain of where we stood, and also pretty angry.

Another side note - months after that whole visit debacle, after I had already begun dating my fiance, K called around Christmas time. I didn't even know he still HAD my phone number. It was awkward, to say the least. He apparently has taken up drinking and being miserable. So it's probably best for both of us that I'm not there.

At this point in my life, though... I forgive him. It wouldn't have worked, and I guess we both knew it, I was just desperate for someone to love me already. I was willing to sacrifice education for almost all of these men. I was willing to throw away cheaper tuition rates to try to go to school in states (and COUNTRIES) I'd never lived in, forever away from my family. I was willing to sacrifice everything for love.

And all of these things came together today to make me realize something - They taught me how to know what I want. When I look at my fiance, I see someone who is kind, patient, giving, loving, forgiving, and a Believer to boot. He doesn't get angry, he has never been mean to me in any action or word (on purpose - he flails in his sleep). He was close to me (he moved from Florida to Texas just before we started dating... literally, like, we met on OKCupid, talked for 2 weeks, then he moved here and we were inseparable, and it wasn't for me that he moved). He is older than me. He is smart, he loves reading, he loves music, he loves drama without needing to cause it. He trusts me, and I him. And he doesn't lead me on and disappoint me.

For once in my life, I am loved the way I needed to be, and I am able to love back the way I longed to. We were watching a bad horror/zombie movie today, and I realized as we joked back and forth, and also when he was laying back on my stomach as we both read books of our own likings... this is all I want. I'm going to school, I'm pursuing a career I think utilizes the most of my abilities in dealing with people, and I'm marrying a man who makes me happy, and who is happy with me in return.

There's no gut-wrenching feelings of guilt and misery as I sit there waiting for an IM response from someone I'm not sure how to love. There's no teeth-tightening sensations of agony as my stomach twists as I realize that I am unhappy here. There's only hope and comfort as I know that no matter what the future holds, we can be happy curled up together.

This is incredibly lengthy, and probably dull to anyone who doesn't know me, but it was more of a needing to get it out than looking for an audience.

All of these internet trysts, whether I met them in person or not, they all had their hand in my formation of romance and respect for myself. I don't understand the internet the way I used to, now that I see what it is like to really be loved. I think some long-distance relationships work (hi James and Aria!), but for the most part - I wouldn't trade being able to rub my fiance's head while he shoots Spies in Team Fortress 2 for the world.

Life is happening really quickly these days. Nothing out of the ordinary has occurred, but I've found myself kind of waking up on Mondays and going "Wow, it's next week already? I barely did what I needed to do LAST week!"

Which is an unfortunate sentiment, but true nonetheless. Ah, well. Things are still getting done as they need to be, and I'm still treading water in all of my classes, despite a crippling bout of depression that has kept me feeling down and out. And by treading water I mean acing tests and doing okay on the ones I thought I for-really-real bombed.

I have taken out, as they say, a new lease on life. It's hard, but we get through it. I've got to learn to open up and rely on other people. I realized last week that the more I focus inward on my own problems, the less I notice other people's struggles. And I don't think I'm here to do nothing but gripe about my life. I think I was given a heart that loves fully, and I think I've been terrified to use it lately.

Because bringing people who aren't me into my life means surrendering control over the simple, albeit sometimes lonely existence that I live. By fully believing the lies that my brain likes to throw at me, I lock other people out. Letting depression take control of my thoughts, my tears, all of me, keeps me from being reached by the people I most desperately need.

I recently had to acknowledge the fact that I don't have much money. That may not a big surprise when you take into the account that I am in school, with no job, and no income other than just what I need to clear my share of the bills. However, that fact scared me. It made me feel something of a failure.

How backwards is that? Needing to rely on my fiance, who has a job and a steady income, to help buy groceries and gas, made me feel BAD. So many people in this world would squeal to have the opportunity to rely on someone else, and I'm moping because I have someone who's willing to shoulder that responsibility?

Seriously, I worry about my head sometimes.

But I know where it comes from. I've been a loner for a long time, and even though I've been with him for over a year now, the idea that someone is there for me in any and every capacity still seems so foreign. I had to take care of myself, for the most part, growing up. Sure, my parents paid the bills and bought me food, but emotionally and academically, I fended for myself. My parents loved me and raised me well, but my sister ate up a lot of our existence. Still does.

That's a blog entry for another time, though.

Regardless, I've been so used to isolation that it became my strength. And I've just come to realize that being alone is not strength. Being strong on your own isn't any feat - what battles do you come against when you have no friends or enemies? Being able to work with people beside you, to stand on your feet when you're afraid, to have the confidence not to back down in any of life's ordeals... that's strength. And it can only happen when you let people in and start living life, instead of hiding from it and pretending that's enough.

It's a hard lesson. One I'm still working on mastering, I'm more than ready to admit. But I've noticed changes in myself. I'm happier, despite this hormonal drag these new pills have set me on. I'm more willing to voice my opinions in groups, in classes, in hallways. What is there to fear? As long as you respect others, you can do a lot more good by speaking out than you can by sitting still.

Nobody can hurt me if I don't let them. Sure, they can say mean things, but I have control over how I react, and it's been easier to just... do what I need to get done, school-wise, but also feel happy and secure in my own existence.

My body is mine. My thoughts are mine. My humor, my style, my heart, it all makes up me, and I've come to realize that people kind of like me. I'm by no means nearing narcissism here, but it's a nice feeling.

Anyway. I am waiting for a Joss Whedon Fan Club meeting to organize here in the Comet Cafe. We're working on getting this sucker started, and I am dedicated to making friends and having Common Interests.

Take that, negativity.