How I got here: an unexpected love story

For Christmas of 2006, my brother got me an MMO called City of Heroes. It was one that he and his wife enjoyed playing, and since I had recently upgraded to cable internet, he thought I should be having fun with it as well.

Initially, I didn't load the game. He called me and said, "Hey, why aren't you on yet? You get a free trial with it so you should at least check it out...." Ok fine, around the time of the Valentine's Day event I put it on and he helped me get set up. I had a bit of fun meandering over the city with my newly-created stone tanker, Brawlita. I died a lot and didn't team much with others, except for my bad-influence brother.

Eventually I teamed with a toon (character played by an actual person) named Nopalita. It was funny that our names both ended in lita - I'm curious now if that is why she picked me to play with. She was a small toon, mostly green, with the powers of spines and spikes protruding from her back (fighting class: scrapper). Spike + green = nopales, hence the name. I probably met her when I was around level 20 or so; she invited me to her super group, where I met others to play with. We also could team up with members of our coaliton, and it was here I met Forrest Tiger.

Why the two R's in his name? Even he doesn't know. He teamed with some other friends of ours in a large group of players called a coalition. I ended up teamed with him quite a bit, though usually with several other players.

One time he typed something in the chat box like, "BRB, need more music!" I sent him a 'tell' (private message), asking him what he was listening to. "Lacuna Coil," he typed back. OH REALLY.... considering they were a band I really liked a lot, I was interested to find out more. So we 'telled' back-and-forth a bit, at first about music and later about where we lived, etc.

I grew to really enjoy logging onto City of Heroes and seeing that he was on. We started teaming together quite a bit, sometimes just the 2 of us but usually still with friends. I grew to really like what I saw of his personality and sense of humor - never crude or mean-spirited, often silly. We shared a few personal details through chatting, such as his having had cancer and that neither of us were seeing anyone. We found out our age difference, exchanged Myspace details, and that we lived about 1,700 miles apart.

Ozzy Ozbourne is responsible for us finally meeting "in real life!" We would have met eventually, I'm sure, but it just so happens that Ozzfest was free in 2007, but we had a dilemma: Ozzfest was not coming to Minnesota, and while it was coming to WA, I had no one to go with me. I half-jokingly typed, "Hey, you should fly over and attend Ozzfest with me!" He types back, "Ok." I then thought, "ACK! What have I done?!" While I did kind of want to meet him, it meant that he, a person I'd not yet met in real life, would be coming to stay with me for a week. What if we didn't get a long? What if there was no chemistry? What if (like everyone's mom likes to say) he was a bad guy?

Well he came over in July of 2007, and after a few days of initial skittishness, we became a lot closer. By the time he had to go back to Minnesota, it was pretty well-established that we liked each other. He flew over to WA to see me about every 1.5 months - the times in between his visits were hard for both of us.

Eventually the realization came that one of us was going to have to move.

He thought I should move over there with him, but I wasn't willing to without a serious committment, as in marriage. I know that marriage is not a necessity for couples to be committed to each other, but IN MY OWN experience, that 'co-habitation' (hate that term) thing never worked out. I would be giving up my job of 7 years, the closeness of my friends and family, and the gorgeousness of Washington for the unknown. I wanted something in return from him in exchange for all that I was giving up.

So about 6 months after we met, he proposed. That was one of the few times in my life I'd been shocked speechless. It was incredible to me really; I had always been one of those who kind of scoffed at marriage, until I met THIS guy. I woke up the next morning and was like, "Whoah... did that really happen?!" Since it was a spur-of-the-moment act for him, he hadn't come prepared with a ring or anything.

I chose to move to MN to be with him rather than him coming to WA for a few reasons. One is that his job had a greater career potential, while mine was just a job. Secondly, an ex-bf of mine knew where I lived and had the annoying habit of showing up occasionally (in fact, he showed up the week before I got married; didn't talk to him much, as I was HORRIBLY ill with food poisoning from the MN airport food). I just didn't want any ties to former relationships nearby - I felt to truly make this work on my end, I needed a fresh start. Otherwise, if things started getting the slightest bit sticky, I could have bailed a lot more easily than I could now.

I don't regret doing it this way, but I sure do miss my friends and family back in WA.