With this schedule that I’ve been on, I’ve spent most of my drives home at midnight chatting to Mom on the IP phone (from Anbell, who bought out Televoice Communications) that I left connected to make it easier for them to talk to me regularly. It’s been an opportunity to just burn up the airwaves because this falls under “nights and weekends” special rates from AT&T and of course all those minutes on the IP phone that she wouldn’t normally be using up. We alternate nights – some nights she calls me, some I call her. More often than not, after the 40 minute drive from work to home, I am opening my front door with Mom still on the phone.
We’ve talked about just about everything and its like it used to be with she and I – solving the worlds problems one passionate discussion at a time.
One night in particular, we happened to have been talking about my “new” life here and she says “Sometimes I think about it and it just seems to me to be some kind of fairytale“. And as she said that, it just hit me square in the face. My life is exactly like a fairytale.
The lone girl, content with her existence, rallying along valiantly when she meets the prince charming of another world entirely who sweeps her off her feet and makes her into a “happily ever after” princess.
I’ll tell you this – even I sometime marvel at how my life turned out. I was cynical, unhappy yet perfectly content to live my life alone and in perpetual geekdom. And that sounds like a paradox, but when I explain it’ll be clearer. Unhappy in that there was little in my life that gave me pure unadulterated, unconditional joy. Unhappy in the general, long-term sense, but I was content to stay that way because there were things that made life worth living. I’d been through a lot to get where I was, and I wasn’t in any rush to change anything at all.
Enter my dear sis, Yolospat, who insisted that I get into the whole World of Warcraft fever … and I have to say that I resisted it for many weeks while I continued to be infatuated with and addicted to Sacred, Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. She wore me down tho, and I decided to get in on a trial and see just what all the fuss was about.
I haven’t looked back, and when one day I stumbled upon my now husband in a completely random encounter, I was actually a little annoyed because he was actually being rude to me. 
By the end of the encounter, however, we both realized that there was something about the other that drew us in. Soon we were taking our relationship out of game. MSN was the medium of choice for a long time. And then one day, I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to take a chance.
It took him a long time to tell me what kind of work he did. And then it took him almost as long to tell me the particular part that made it impossible for him to visit me anytime soon. So of course, it was up to me to see whether this was real or just fantasy. It was a HUGE risk – I didn’t REALLY know this man and I didn’t really know if he was telling the truth about who he was. I took it. Closed my eyes and fell … head over heels into safe harbour.
I look back today and wonder if I fell out of my bed and hit it that morning I decided to buy a plane ticket to visit him. More so because in a month, I was heading to the same spot for work training anyway, but I had to do this because … well, I had to KNOW.
I should have known the minute he offered to drive 3 hours to collect me at the airport and drive me back to catch my return flight. I should have known when he got up to leave the hotel room that first night and return to wherever it was he spent his nights. I should have known … but I didn’t. It took me a long time to KNOW .. a long time and many more visits.
I’ll tell you the minute I knew … it was the day when I had finally booked a flight all the way through to within an half hour drive of him and had that last leg of the journey canceled on me at Dallas/Ft. Worth due to bad weather. Essentially leaving me stranded, and when I called, he didn’t hesitate to get up and walk out the door to drive all the way to me – through uncertain weather and without the usual “clearances”. I remember sitting in the airport wondering “what the hell just happened?” – because I opened my mouth to say I was going to research a bus or rental car and had to close it again when he said “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Fairytale, Mom? You nailed it. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined this kind of life for me. And I am NOT dreaming – trust me. I pinch myself each and every day, just to make sure.
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