On My Own I’m Only Half Of What I Could Be…

God gave me you for the ups and downs
God gave me you for the days of doubt
And for when I think I’ve lost my way
There are no words here left to say, it’s true
God gave me you

“We are stitched together, and what love has tethered, I pray we never undo.”

Apparently all I do is trash people in this blog.  *Laughs*  As any of you who have been here for any amount of time and actually READ this thing know… that is FAR from the truth… but let the people with more mouth than sense wag their tongues all they like.  And if any have managed to wander their way over here for this post because someone read this small paragraph and went running to them crying ‘drama’, please, take the complimentary doughnut pillow for your butt-hurt and have a seat.

Now that that’s out of the way, the REAL purpose of this post is the exact opposite of trashing (which, this sort of thing and other randomness is what makes up the vast majority of my blog… again, if you’ve been here for any length of time and actually read me, then you know that… lol).  I heard this song what feels like 86,000 times in the 12 hour drive to Indiana, and the 12 hour drive home when I went for my cousin’s Celebration of Life, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

It made me think… and we all know what happens when Tivi thinks… she gets sappy.  LOL.

I’ve been given so many people in my life, both first and second, and more often than not, I find myself focused moreso on the self-centered assholes that use me and then leave.  I’m so blinded by those that hurt me, that I don’t really see those that don’t, nor do I appreciate them often enough.  And so, I thought I’d sorta put it out there, and focus on some of the amazing people that I’ve been given in my Second Life.

God gave me… Rayven.  I figured I’d start here with Him because He is the farthest in my past and the one from this list that I do not talk to any more.  My fault, and too long of a story to indulge in.  In a community full of people – particularly the Men in my life at that time – that would look at a weak woman as something easy to take advantage of, Rayven was the first Male to walk into my life and truly be a Man.  He saw a vulnerable woman in a horrible situation, and rather than thinking about what He could gain, and how He could most easily get what He wanted, He removed me from the situation and proceeded to focus on my safety and my well-being.  In turn, I did my best to serve Him in our relationship, but at the time I did not really have a grasp on the concept of simply ‘doing my duty’ versus truly VALUING a person’s presence in Your life.  Almost 3 years ago now, I did write Him a letter to express these things, and apologize for never valuing Him as much as He deserved, but I’m not sure if He ever read it.  Either way, the idea that Men like Rayven still exist out there somewhere, is honestly what keeps me from giving up on the idea entirely after going through another terrible situation.  A Gem found me once before.  Perhaps it will happen again.  They exist.

God also gave me… Reign.  Mostly to kick my ass when I need it, both in modeling and out.  But seriously.  At the time that I met a certain Miss Reign Congrejo, she came as a bit of a package deal with Sequoia, and both of them were what kept me from quitting modeling all together, almost immediately after I started.  I was involved in a HORRIBLE first pageant experience (ironically, the pageant that inspired me to write the letter to Rayven that I mentioned)… and I was considering simply being done.  We were lied to, verbally accosted at every turn any time someone asked a question or brought something up for clarification, titles were ripped from ladies with no reason, titles were held over our heads like the Sword of Damocles… and the whole thing was just a nightmare.  It wasn’t until I randomly showed up for a video casting that Reign and Sequoia were doing for their Colour of Couture pageant that I met them both, and they showed me a true experience with wonderful people.  To this day, Reign is still the swift kick in the ass I need, when I need it.

God also gave me… Iris.  Dear lord.  A dancer who has just as much, if not more, passion as I do about it… is just as subbie, if not more, outside of dance as I am… and has just as many, if not more (lol), pet peeves as I do about dance and needs someone to rant to.  Iris and I were like a friendship match in freaking heaven.  I am super over-bearing and pushy when I’m stubbornly passionate about something and clinging to it… and she totally puts up with it.  Lol.  I am also super protective of her when she lets me in the deeper things…. and she also puts up with that.  And I know she gets easily frazzled and do my best to make her breathe.  (“Breathe, bitches!”)  Iris is about the only person besides mama that I would trust as a dance teacher to learn from, because she is just as passionate about seeing the individual succeed… not beating the individuality out of them.  And she comes up with zany dance exhibition ideas that let me do crazy dances I’d never get to do anywhere else!

God also gave me… Mama (Rya)!  Oh my god.  This woman… is a pain in my ass.  But a lovable pain in my ass.  Lol.  Mama is another one that kinda saves me from quitting things when the frustration over politics and other general bullshit gets to be too much for me.  Where Reign keeps me from quitting modeling, Rya keeps me from quitting dance.  I never knew the woman was a Gorean dancer when I first met her.  I met her when I was dancing in clubs and just generally hanging out and getting to know people, back when I first joined SL between 7 and 8 years ago.  Later, she became my dance manager, and we were talking one night and she just so happened to mention that she’d started dancing in a place called Gor.  I’d just started roleplaying there off and on and had started dancing myself… and from there, we were pretty much inseparable.  Mama is another one that wishes to see the individual dancer succeed, and share her individual heart, rather than beating the individuality out of them, and I love her to death for it.  It takes a special kind of person to put up with my brand of bullshit every day for 7 years now and still call me her daughter.  LOL.

God also gave me… Sarah.  I swear, if she wasn’t Rya’s daughter, she would be mine.  I really hope that she doesn’t take offense to this analogy, but it’s the only thing I can think of at the moment to describe just the sorts of things Sarah has taught me about myself… you know how sometimes in Health class (or even Science class)… or if your parents are a special brand of twisted, you do this at home too, maybe for punishment… you’re given an egg and you have to take care of it and keep it from breaking?  Or a sack of flour… depending on your school system/parent.  Or the child development classes that give you the fake baby?  Or even parents that try to instill these values of caring in their children by getting them a pet to take care of.  When Sarah started in the classes and let us really get to know her, I connected with her in a way I had never connected with another human being before.  I cared for her, not in a romantic way (lawd… my sister/daughter-figure… that’d be weird), but in a way that so deeply transcended friendship I wouldn’t hesitate to snap the neck of someone who hurt her in any way.  When you go through a lot of negative things in your life like I have – and many of us have – sometimes it desensitizes you and dehumanizes you a bit to the world around you.  Sarah is what keeps me grounded and connected to my inner “decent human being”.

And last but not least, for this completely non-comprehensive list, God gave me… Nova.  (I can picture her getting a little grumbly the more she read, thinking she might not be on the list.  LOL.)  Nova, Nova, Nova.  What can I say about Nova?  Well first of all, it’s all Sam’s fault that I even know her, let alone like her so much.  LOL.  And my Sam’s fault, I mean a collective burden between myself and Sam.  Sam was a friend from college who lived in my dorm building and ran the night desk a lot of nights.  If ever I was up late at night and couldn’t sleep, I’d text her and see if she was running the desk in our building, and if she was, I’d go downstairs and hang out for a bit.  Occasionally I’d bring my laptop, and one day she got a look at it while I was logged into SL.  “What’s that?”  (The dreaded first question, am I right?)  I explained SL to her and she made an avi shortly after and started exploring.  She’d mentioned she’d gotten a friend of hers involved as well, though I later found out that Nova had actually tried SL once before and just hadn’t logged in often or found anything she really liked about it yet before Sam mentioned it to her again.  And so because she was Sam’s friend, obviously I met her.  I even roomed with them for a couple months in real life after college to get out of a not-so-fantastic home situation.  All in all, Nova is just an amazing person.  She puts her all into everything she does and tries her damnedest to do it all to the best of her ability all the time.  It makes me giggle to listen to her get frustrated with herself over the smallest shit, and talk to herself while she’s styling/designing/photographing/doing anything really.  And of course, when we’re in Skype, between my shitty internet and her haunted laptop that likes to randomly switch inputs on her, I can only ever really hear clearly when she’s talking about testicles, nothing else.  My life is far better from having Nova in it.

And those are just a select few of the people in my life that God has given me, that I don’t show appreciation to often enough.  I don’t really do ‘New Year’s resolutions’, but if I did, I would say that one of them… a GOAL, per se, is to consider this more positive side of people more often.  Like I said, I think in my last post, my therapist keeps trying to drill into my head that I can’t just assume the worst of people just because they are similar to people in my past, or the situation we’re in is similar.  And I’m trying to do that.  😀

*~* On My Own I’m Only Half Of What I Could Be… *~*

Shape: MINE
Skin: Layla Skin (Caramel Tone) || AlterEgo
Eyes: Deadshine Eyes (Wight; Natural pupil) || IKON
Hair: Amber (Brunettes) || Spellbound
Body: Lara Body (v3.4) || Maitreya
Hands: Avatar Enhancement Hands (Casual) || Slink
Eye Makeup: Mya Makeup (manually tinted) || Nuuna
Freckles: Odd Beauty Freckles || Besom
Gown: Queen Gorgo Draped Ancient Dress (Plum) || Kaithleen’s || Recent Release!

Pose (photo 1): Statue 7 || Posesion
Pose (photo 2): Cute 5 mirror || Vitalis Animatum

Location: Pandora Box of Dreams

Blogging Tune: “God Gave Me You” – Blake Shelton