How did a Carolina Girl meet a West Coast Boy?
Online!
At the beginning of my junior year in college, I started playing a MMORPG (for those of you who don't speak Geek, that means massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) called Everquest. Everquest was a huge online world of elves and trolls and humans and lizards and cats and dwarfs and so-on-and-so-forth that battled a never ending stream of nasties wanting to send you back to your bind spot naked (in other words, kill you).
I first got into the game through my friends Rachel and Sara in Texas, though I hardly ever actually played in the game with either of them. I mostly went about the lands of Norrath (the world of Everquest) on my own picking up a few new in-game acquaintances along the way. In the game, players could form groups of up to six to go on large hunts that on their own would be impossible to live through. I had a few other players that I liked to group with, but I was always willing to form a pickup group with almost anybody.
My one and only character was a white haired half-elf (half-elf, half-human) named Mystianah who was a rogue by trade. Her biggest talents were sneaking around and backstabbing enemies.
One day, in the sunny desert of the Dreadlands, a tall handsome barbarian named Braemourne entered the group I was playing with. In the midst of slaying ginormus spiders we struck up a little flirting. Ok. So at first thought the computer rendered character in his kilt with his little knobby knees was cute. But it didn't take long to realize that the player behind the character could actually type (all communication was done in a chat box) and he actually had a pretty good grasp of spelling and grammar. Most players of the game tended to be teenaged boys who apparently didn't pay much attention during English class.
Pretty soon we had added each other to our friends lists in the game and would see when one another would sign on. We played a lot for about a year before Everquest expanded taking all of the fun out of being a casual player who didn't want to spend 10 or more hours a day devoted to guild quests (larger groups of players could form guilds and fight even bigger battles together). After Everquest was taken over by power players and newbies who had no idea how to correctly roleplay, we abandonned what brought us together and started chatting through IMs in January of 2003, when we finally learned each others names.
We chatted for hours about nothing in particular every night until the end of August 2004. Ever since 2000, I've gone to the beach for a week in the summer with friends of mine from an online message board. On the eve of my trip, we wished each other goodbye. He was heading out too, on a trip of his own -- mountain biking with a friend in Canada. So I knew I wouldn't talk to him for several days after I got back from the beach. Several days then turned into a week. Then two weeks...then three...then a month. I was worried. By this time, I had sorta developed a crush on my chat buddy. He was fun to talk to! Had he found someone in Canada? Was the Canada trip just a ploy to quit talking to me? ACK! I occasionally worked myself into a panic about why he was missing. With great self-restraint I held back from barraging his inbox with daily emails. I didn't want him to think I was stalking him or that I was desperate for attention that he didn't want to give.
Then finally, one evening out of the blue I got a very short, very painful IM from him near the end of September. It went something like this:
Me: !
Him: Hey
Me: Hey
Him: How's you?
Me: Great...you?
Him: Glad to be out of the hospital.
Me: What happened?
Him: Went over a jump in Canada, landed on my back. Broke my back in 8 places, broke my collarbone, and the trauma and pain med they loaded me up on triggered a flare up of my UC. So I've been in the hospital for 29 days.
Me: I was worried something happened to you...
Him: Four day vacation turned into 29 days of hospital fun. Off to lie down, can't stay up too long before I get tired. Chat laters.
Me: I'm glad you're better...er..I"m sure you're not feeling great.
After that we slowly worked back up to our hours of chatting every night. In 2005 our nightly chats were again cut short for his second back surgery, followed by several trips back to the ER when he had bad allergic reactions to his pain medications.
Things turned pretty serious after that. Before the accident there was a sort of "I probably like him/her more than he/she likes me" feel, but then we both spilled the beans that we thought the other was the best thing since sliced bread and it's been that way ever since. Occasionally the mileage between us would seem too great to overcome, but in August 2006 we came together for the first time and knew in an instant that we could never let there be a whole country between us ever again.
After that week-long first visit, we started planning for our future. In November 2006, he came to NC to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with me. He officially proposed on December 28 after we picked out my peridot and blue topaz engagement ring from Macy's. The original plans were for him to fly back to Washington shortly after the new year and for me to fly back out to "pick him up" in late February. That plan fell through at the last minute when neither one of us could bear for him to get on the plane. We quickly rethought our plans and planned a trip to Washington for later in January to pack all of his things to be shipped out to NC.
In March 2007 we moved out of my tiny studio apartment and into a spacious two-bedroom townhouse of our own. His stuff (52" tv, mountain bike, computer, etc.) arrived about a week after we moved in.
And, that's were we are in the story at the moment. Right now we're looking forward to our wedding ceremony on May 4 and our wedding reception on June 10. We're also very anxious for one of the 20 or so employers Jamie has sent a job application to to call back wanting to hire him. Who knew looking for a job was so hard! I'm ever grateful that my job literally fell into my lap.
UPDATE: Gosh, I didn't realize I'd left you all hanging. We got married on May 4, 2007 in a quick, easy, and cheap courthouse wedding ceremony. In attendance were my mom and grandparents, and the folks from my old job. I wore a cute blue dress with white polka dots --- it was my something blue. I borrowed an Australian opal necklace from my grandma. Tied to one of the ribbons of my bouquet, which I made, was my grandma's mother's wedding ring -- my something old. And, of course, my shiny wedding band was my something new.
On June 10, 2007 the ladies at my mom's church threw us a wedding reception. We had a delicious spread of tasty nibbles and a wonderfully delicious lemon cake with lemon frosting, not to mention PRESENTS!
My job that literally fell into my lap before I graduated college suddenly fell out of my lap in the fall of 2007. Luckily it lasted until the end of 2007 and we were able to find a job for Jamie just before Christmas. I found a very short temporary job in January and then landed a longer term temporary job in February with the hopes of it becoming permanent soon. But we're as happy as two bears in a honey tree and don't really want for anything. We hope the honeymoon never ends!
Happily Ever After!
