Happy 2nd Birthday Omniverse!

[Mickey Mouse]

There is no proper way to write this.

My life has been pretty easy. For the majority of my young life my family lived a decidedly middle-class existence, my parents were loving and supportive of my out-there interest in a career as a stage actor, and I had friends that loved to come over to my house and eat whatever food my mom threw at them. In my free time, I hid away in dark corners of my room roleplaying on sites of various different types -- Harry Potter, Dragonball Z, Glee. I got accepted to a small private college, got there, fell into my busy schedule, and slowly lost interest.

While I was there, my world got rocked. This is something I don't know if I've ever mentioned, but my mom passed away during the second semester of my freshman year. So between trying to figure out how to live on my own and how to talk to girls, I had to figure out how to live without a mom.

My dad lost the job that he'd been at for 25 (!) years, and for the next few years couldn't keep one. Eventually he accepted a position he was way overqualified for that paid him way less than he (and I) was used to, and moved across the country. Fourteen hours separated me and my Dad for a year and a half of my life. He came to see me a few times, but I was only able to visit him twice. Once, I drove out there with a close friend of mine and then I flew out to see him at the end of a summer. Slowly, things got harder and harder. I could feel my life crumbling beneath my feet.

In the midst of all this, I discovered a certain flexibility in my sexuality, decided that while I didn't quite identify as bisexual or homosexual I also didn't quite identify as straight either, and was dealing mentally with that, along with the mental drain of getting regularly rejected by girls I tried to date.

Now, this isn't to say these problems are the hardest problems anyone has had to face. My life isn't that hard in perspective. But having them all get thrown at me within two or three years of one another was exhausting, and eventually, I didn't know where to turn. So I thought I'd try to find out if the people I'd had so much fun RPing with way back in high school were still into it. Little did I know, here they were.

I picked the happiest character I could think of and once I had finished college, jumped headfirst into playing him. Alex challenged me in the first DA rankings to prove I could play with the big kids, so I pulled out all the motherfucking stops. It consumed me. Little else mattered other than getting home from whatever I was doing and getting back to Mickey. I fell in love with him with all my heart and then I fell in love with all of you. Whenever I was on here, my problems seemed to slip away. Nothing else mattered. The most stressful thing in my life was wondering if Greg and Josh would be mad if they found out Erza and I had been aligned with Ambrosia from the beginning, and wondering if I'd written down all the danger zones.

My life started to get better. I told not only my friends but my dad about my crush on my guy friend. I got a job working for a theatre (and a second job to supplement that income) and threw myself headfirst into it. I moved out on my own, away from college. My dad got a job that's going to put him just two hours away from me.

I'm happy. Still no girlfriend, but whatever.

So: thank you, Omniverse. I'm happy you're alive. And I fully expect you to be alive for years to come and I'm so excited to help that happen in whatever ways I can. Thank you, Greg -- and Alex, and Jeff, and Sam, and Baron, and all the other staff and members who have made this experience so goddamn special. Let's keep on chugging.