Lyric's back story

Once, I was a Paladin, when boys ran free in the woods defeating dragons and buttercups were touched to young girls' lips. It was easy to be noble and fearless when you saw only love and never heart break. My inspirational mentor of all time was Sir Lancelot, mostly portrayed in early Hollywood movies. He was an idealistic young man, come to join King Author, and sworn to protect all damsels, except he had a weakness for one, the King's wife. Love ruled and the kingdom fell. It was tragic and all so confusing for me as a child of those years.

I still bear the scars from my first joust with love. It was first grade and her name was Kelli, a name a bit similar to your name perhaps, but I like yours better. What does your name mean? It is Hawaiian? Japanese? ... Kelli sat in front of me in a column of heavy metal school desks that had storage bins in the seat and in the writing surface. I loved the smell of pencil shavings in the storage boxes. I was always drawing sketches and mazes or rocket ship designs or playing baseball with my best friend Chuck, or writing stories with Tim who could not play in the playground at recess so I would stay inside with him to keep him company and build castles. But I stared at Kelli's neck throughout the day, the way she tied her hair up in a pony tail... She would torment me by stealing my sketches and running around the desks to keep them away from me. Her laugh, I still remember. I always kept sketches out so she could steal them in this way. One day I didn't want to run around the desks, I charged over them like Don Quixote defending his land and his lady from the dragons of windmills. My shoe slipped and my chin landed on her desk back. I have the scars from the stitches on my chin to this day, to remember Kelli by.

Awww, what a precious story! My name is Hawaiian, good guess. I’m afraid I don’t have any cute stories like that.

Thank you! It's gotten cuter with distance, lol. Your stories are not cute? Tragic, happy, empowering? What is your back story, Kili?

My favorite love story is, from all places, a science fiction book, by Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, but only one particular chapter. It is definitely written from the male perspective, which makes it quite unique in love stories. The protagonist is a genetically selected man who lives a thousand years. He finds himself at the beginning of this chapter on a remote planet where the land is being explored and settled almost like the wild west. He is a banker. He makes money off of the prospectors' projects. He had learned to make money on other people's backs. As fate would have it, he forecloses on a land and becomes the protector of a young girl coming of age. She is a romantic and convinces her new benefactor to leave the comfort of the town and practical banking work and head "west" and into adventure. She captivates him, she had spunk and he agrees to marry her and go settle the wilds. He returns the next day as the "nephew" with a wagon of supplies very carefully selected because they would have to be self sufficient. After many centuries of experiences, he does a fine job with packing and being her protector. It is soon apparent that she was his savior instead.

He had removed the grey hair makeup that made him "age" with his coworkers. He is as young a man as any who would start life out with the girl. And off they go. Her name is Dora. He had had many lifetimes of love and heart ache, but Dora was the one true love of all the centuries. They had kids, defended themselves from bandits, survived and thrived.

When she passes of old age, he does not cry. He takes off his makeup again to return to his travels. But her love haunts him from chapter to chapter in the book. When he is programming AI ship computers, he constantly tries to recreate Dora's voice and mannerisms and life. There is no way.

It is tragic and beautiful to me. In a book of misadventures, he made a true and lasting connection with another soul. Dora and he had purest form of love to him.

I read this right after college. It made me realize that I had looked for that kind of love in every relationship I had been in. Setting the standard that high made heart break easy, even ridiculous inevitable. No one is perfect. But love? It really can be. Kit and Duke have it. It is actually easy to achieve if you let it. I still believe that.

I have cute stories, but none like yours. I was homeschooled and even with groups, sports, all that, everything was constantly supervised so stuff like that never happened. I don't have anything close to first loves or boyfriends until I was 16 or 17. Most of the interesting things about me happened before I was about 20-21, although there was a good bit of tragedy in it. Most of life has been pretty tragic or depressing ever since.

One of my favorite love stories is a book called The Eternal Ones. Ironically, it's a book about the reincarnation of Adam and Eve and how they spend their lifetimes trying to find each other because they can't stop reincarnating until they live their happily ever after. This all takes place in modern times, probably early 2010s.

The problems are though that Eve, or Haven as she's actually named, doesn't really remember who she is. She gets visions of her past lives, and her small town life/family think she's crazy because of it and that she's possessed by the devil. Through research, she discovers a society in NYC that has to do with reincarnated people and decides to run away and find out what she can about these past lives she sees. Through this journey, she encounters Adam and he's of course trying to win her over and explain who she is, but the devil is in human form and there as well constantly trying to corrupt her and lead her astray.

It's a very interesting take on the concept of reincarnation, which I love, along with the thought that love can literally transcend time and places. It's a very hopeless romantic book with a religious twist. I recently bought the book cause I'd been constantly borrowing it from one of my best friends, but I'm nervous to open it since I've been so against anything really romantic. Although this campaign seems to be the exception.

Hugggggggggg

I met my first wife, Lisa, rollerblading. I had fallen into a gang of ruthless, bar diving college grads, who terrorized their old campus at Rice and shanghaied new bladers into pub crawls. We knew the streets and which bars would receive us. The new bladers would be put in the middle of the line and we had fun picking up the pace so that they would lift their feet and just bladetrain along.

I knew her friend with her when she first entered my turf, so I was bold enough to come talk. Lisa, didn't slow down with her friend however and she raced past. Not to be outdone with me being on my racer wheels, I gave chase. Lisa didn't see the police barricade that blocked the normally open campus road. She hit the top bar at top speed and did two bar rotations. Is was then that I found out that she was legally blind. We all caught up and helped her and she instantly became part of the gang, harassing the campus police, and sharing her gift of gab at the campus pub, Valhalla. She claimed her gift was from her father the salesmen, but she had more than any of her siblings. She was tutored by a wonderful special education adjunct to her school, outside of the normally dictatorial deaf/blind school education system in Kansas. She got an education unmatched by her siblings. She was an independent. She directly benefited from her perceived disability. She came with a reputation. She was the Rice Owl Mascot that single handed incited a riot with our rivals who could not take a joke, Texas A&M at one of the football games. She earned two degrees. She had leveraged her educational resume into being a presidential intern for Bush Sr. And she was then, a Human Resource Manager as a hospital and at night, a Continental flight reservations agent (thus the flight benefits).

After being girlfriend and boyfriend, she took me to Aspen, Colorado with a busload of blind skiers who participate in the BOLD program, guided by snow bums/pros. After one day of being on the bunny slopes, I hit my epiphany, skiing was the opposite of rollerblading. The same motion that sped up the blader, slowed the skiier going down hill. After that, I was skiing blues and blacks and Lisa and her guide would strake snow on me and seduce me to go down unmarked trails. One trail, I was falling behind as I had never jumped before. I hit the jump wrong and landed my skis in the soft spring snow. I did my own two somersaults down the hill and it took me forever to post hole back up to my skiis. The trail was unmarked, so there was no traffic to help. Lisa waited impatiently at the bottom of the woods with her guide. They laughed at me when I joined them and proceeded to drop down another unmarked trail directly to the bottom lift. I should have taken that as a sign of things to come.

12 years later, I was plane commuting to Arkansas to do land developments with my high school friends. Lisa had started cheating on me at the hotel that we owned and ran. Her suggestion as to how to resolve that was for us to separate and see other people. That devastated me more than any other suggestion she could make. Even when I had fallen sick once and she ridiculed me for taking off work and disappeared for three days leaving me alone in a room with no help, even that was less cruel than what she suggested we do with our relationship. We owned a couple dozen rental units, the hotel, and six businesses. She was paranoid that she would not have enough money or property or people around her to support her if she ever did go totally blind. The fear drove her every decision and her cruelty. She did not want to divorce and split the "investment" but did nothing to address my desire to have a house and be together instead of moving from room to room as guests would come in. She could not have kids, and for that I am grateful now.

I flew to Arkansas to go backpacking and started work there. I dated and wrote sex stories and played SL. It felt so dirty. And when I got close to someone, I would have to break off. It destroyed the paladin in me. I had to turn it off in order to not be so lonely. The heartache was real.

Once at the Arkansas airport, I saw a couple ahead of me in security. The man could barely walk and the woman was the same age, but she helped him to the bench so she could bend down and help put back on his shoes. He touched his fingers to her hair lovingly. I stood there staring. Here was love. Eternal god given love. I knew in my heart that being a romantic was still a possibility.

I quit SL. I started dancing and then dating there too. When I had broken my heart so many times, it became a constant feeling, I broke down. I asked Lisa for a divorce and she threw a fit saying she was Catholic and could never. That surprised me as I did not even know she was religious. We had gotten married at the Justice of the Peace so I could fly with her on benefits. Once the papers were filed, I didn't even pause and started to look for real love. I dated on Yahoo and had many misadventures, but one shy girl's post made me swoon. I wrote her a long introduction and we met at a wine bar and fell in love. Christi and I were the happiest couple all the way up until her illness destroyed that. I still love her and am busy with the kids. Life goes on. At least I'm not with Lisa anymore!

Then I find a girl who has allowed me to take up my oath of paladin again. A girl who is the reincarnation of love eternal, sensitive to people, wanting to help and make laugh. She knows my every trial and has the same interests and sense of humor. I feel alive again and happy to know you Kilikina.

I recognized your plea for help even as you did not express it, or even will it. It was coded in your messages, written between the lines, from the very beginning of our discord. I have known the feeling. I had stayed up all night once with my bother Dennis while he cried. He is older than I, and his tears were earth shaking to me. He had lost his 20 year old boy to suicide. Even recently, we lost one of our craftmen to military PTS. I understand the dire consequences of what you contemplate. I refuse to give up loving you. But that is not my story today.

After Lisa and I separated, I worked more in SL for the University of Houston. I found a girl there that I enjoyed. We lived much too close to not take the romance to RL. You can guess it. She lived in Arkansas. We were both ending long term relationships and I fell completely in love for the first time of my life. I called her Juliet, and I Romeo. Unfortunately, she was less than true, as she went back to her husband and got pregnant. The back of my mind still pokes me that the kid might be mine. She named her Juliet. I fell deep into depression. I quite work. I crashed. My heart was betrayed and brutalized and was physically more empty and painful than my body could possibly be empty and hurt. Being a man of action, I contemplated murdering the husband. For two days I planned and schemed until I realized that my Juliet was not worth being a reward for such dark thoughts. After that I contemplated suicide. This lasted only a week for my indomitable spirit. I have thoroughly enjoyed life not being in prison.

I felt terribly alone and Thomas was the only person I confided in. I only keep one friend at a time you know. It took months for me to come out. Even marrying Christi a year later, was not enough to heal my wounds, but I did not let that stop me from embracing her love. I know you have a different hurt and a different path. Scars may be salved but they do not fade, hurts may be soothed but they do not disappear, and the cuts on Edward Scissorhand's face will always be part of him. They are to be shared, worn as a cloak, and celebrated as a passage through life. Let me celebrate with you Kilikina. I love you always.

Let's talk more today. May I call you?

I am feeling very vulnerable now. I want to get this out but not in chat because I do not know if I what to hear the answers to my questions. That is how afraid I am of the answers. This little lined box with the rounded corners is my own pocket dimension of anxiety where I hear my voices. It is not nearly as dark as yours, because I have made sure that I have hopeful voices and even delusional voices to keep my spirits up even when the doubts are strong.

How to say this, I do not know. Ill keep typing until something comes out of me, probably in a rush of words tumbling out of control. You know I chatted with Nate tonight and told him about you. I explained to you that I don't know if he would understand the romance of the online chat. As much as that sounds ok to say, my voices pummeled me with doubts as to whether I was covering something up in those words, or downright lying to myself. He could have heard it, if I had told him. How could he not? He was making a deep friend of me, since he cannot make shallow ones. It is not his nature. He is as deep as his giant frame and larger than the world. No, the problem was my voices drowning me out.

I promised not to use your dimension against you. I do not know how I would or could do that. Maybe I'm doing it now and I don't know it. However, if using your metaphor does that, I should stop. I don't want that. But it is a good metaphor and it applies to me as well. My voices are drowning out my thoughts so that I cannot express my real concerns to you. Is this how it is with you? Stop reading this if this voice is correct and I should not be using this metaphor. I, on the other hand, have to write. My fingers demand it. My heart is racing. My fear is high.

I can't sleep. My cold is better. I run the scenarios through my brain and filter them, criticize them.

I have declared you my girlfriend. I tell you I love you. I am unshaken in that. But my voice reminds me that you love as if you care. You feel love for another, the No2. Why cannot I remember his name that you gave me today? I was busy noticing your pause. It was a funny little pause, as if you didn't want to say it. My voices filled in a hidden message. They told me that you either didn't want to tell me his name, because you cherished it and didn't want to taint it in my speech, or that you didn't want to hurt me by telling me a name of the one you love. You care, I know. I should ask you directly and let you laugh it off by telling me you didn't pause, that you didn't have a psychological response when you recalled his name and gave it to me, that there is nothing there to tell. Its paranoia, I know. With anything important, I want to know everything I can. When I do not know, my mind fills in a whole scenario. I know my game is to be patient and love you and outlast my demons. Yet I doubt and falter and build a wall around my emotions. It is easy enough for Duke to overcome the shy little boy inside, but I must live with him and best him daily.

I reread the paragraphs above and know I should delete every one of them. I should be strong for you. Thomas advises as such. Thomas is a fool though. This is the real me. The kind of man who is real, who knows his demons and puts up with them. But the voices are strong tonight, my love.

I talked to Nate, because I wanted help with a problem. He assumed it was Christi, so we talked about that and then about his kid that he had to give up for the same reasons. Did we ever get around to talking about my problem? Is it a problem? Or a delusion? I have fallen in love with a girl that excites me and inspires the best in me. I have declared my love and she needs to wait, to be slow, so I sit with my voices and try not to invent a reality that isn't there. I guess that's my problem. I've done it a thousand times before. I have created a situation that has no solution, a puzzle with too many missing pieces in me. I know my faults. I have plenty of voices to point them out. But I have my hope and dreams that tell me you smile on Facetime sometimes from your heart. I could live months without food on such a look.

I made the subforum before starting this. I call you Kitty in the opening thread. I'm signaling that I have a nickname for you and that you are more special than I am letting on. Why then, can I not call you my girlfriend? Do I doubt it in my heart? No. Do I doubt it in yours? Not really that either. There is an us. It may belong in Kit and Dukes dialogue. I keep hoping that is not all it is, but I know that may be my only answer. I hate his dimension I have created for myself. How can I help you with yours when I have one myself. I can't, that's why. Is that a voice that just spoke or me? I really should not type at this hour. It is dark.

I love you Christina. I do hope you can see my dark side too without panicking or fearing for me or for yourself. Nate told me of his, too. We all have it. Nate and I both are fallen paladins but we go on. We are still stronger than that side of us that we keep hidden. I know you are, too.

I do know what I am going to do though now. I am going to edit the opening of the thread and say that you are my girlfriend. I at least know that is true, even if I do not understand the feelings.

This thread was meant to share stories about my life. I didn't want to burden dialogue or chat with ramblings. It seems to now be sharing my dark side with you, about you, for you. I'm uncomfortable about this trend, not because of the darkness, but because I don't want to burden you at this very moment that you struggle with being a part of a community of online friends where one has upset that friendship, and even more because your love is dating and neither you nor he can address your hurt about it. Those are gross oversimplifications, but in general they concern me. First and foremost, they hurt you and I don't want you to feel pain, even while I now that hurt heals, and you don't address them head on, and you withdraw further into darkness over them. I love you and want to comfort you. I want you to share your hurt and let me listen. But of course that gets to my hurt, since I do love you. I see you ghost friends as I fear you might one day do to me, being only an online account or two connection to you. You even warned me that you might disappear for a while at times. This doesn't give me comfort considering your thoughts on throwing it all away. I see you express your love to no#2 and it shakes my very strong delusions that I am your boyfriend. I fear you would hide any of this part of your life from me, deceive me so as to not hurt me. But love, I want to feel the hurt if its there. I want to deal with my fears head on. I want to know the unknown. I want to read your whole novel and rejoice in your triumphs and cry with you at your failings. I know that I differ in you in this regard, and that only strengthens my resolve to be different so we can be a strong team, a friendship, a relationship how ever you define us. If we are friends, I want to be fast friends. If we are an online romance, I want to love on you. If we are sharing souls, I want to love deeply. You know my heart.