Welcome to Gaia! ::

It's enough to keep me interested! *wink*

Oh, well, now that I have everyone's attention, maybe I should add one of my personal favorite webcomics of all time. Don't knock it 'till you read it, 'k guys?

It's called Boy Meets Boy, and it's amazing, I promise. Ask Tommy if you don't believe me!
-LD

Uhm...actually, I would. Spke's just a little too much of a...uh, how to put this nicely...drama queen. And Buffy's b***h. Plus, he's really blonde. I don't like his hair at all.

But Skids is my favorite! And he, my dear Elv, is truly yumtastic.
-LD

Really? I always liked Buffy. In a way, she kind of reminded me of my mom....

Wow...that one sounded weird....
-LD

I adore John Barroman... he's such a child in real life, always giggling and making awful jokes...

I'm not, actually. But when I like something or someone I take the care to learn as much as I can about said person or thing. Its a lot easier with characters or things, sometimes learning about people is harder than anticipated.
Basically, I have a compulsion to know everything I can about the things I love.

Anyways, I can't have John Barrowman, he's in this wonderful civil partnership with Scott Gill, who is an architect if I remember correctly. They're happy together, so that's good.

Another Floridian! Anymore of us and it's gonna be a beach in here (or at least a very, very hot, salt-smelling place)! Of course, I seem to recall saying something like that when I first got here, too. (We had a lot more Canadians then, it seems.) But we still have Lion and Tommy representing Ontario for us!

Found the BS site! http://bs.brokensaints.com/#
-LD

EDIT: Guys, upon reflection, perhaps a warning is in order. Broken Saints is not for the light-hearted.

There is a strange longing in my soul. I ache for something that I can't put my finger on, in a place I can't reach. I feel so strange--the way, I guess, a baby must feel about milk before its first drink. There is no way for the child to know what milk is or what it tastes like, but there it is--the longing for something slightly sweet and warm and wet.

There is a strange longing in my soul, and I can't ignore it any longer. I don't know why I'm feeling these things--I'm wishing for the moment of realization, so it can be done with.

I know I'm doing it again. I don't mean to, but there it is--I'm skating on the surface of my feelings. There is a part of me that is afraid to plumb the depths of my soul, a part of me that fears a part of me. It's like this endless dance or descent, deeper and deeper into my heart, richer and richer with emotion and memory. I don't hate the fear or the sorrow or the danger or the anger--I've come to accept that that's part of the beauty of the dance.
---
Today, in school, I think it hit me a little bit all at once. I was looking for someone--a boy named Jay I give a pretty hard time (don't look too hard for the pun), but I think he's sweet, in an odd way. I was looking for him, at the Multicultural Festival. I saw him once, but he literally pounced on someone, so I decided to let them have their fun. A moment later, he was gone. I asked Mary--a mutual friend?--where he had gone, and she said that I had walked up--in her words--like a queen. But I didn't--not really. She looked into my eyes as I approached.

That's all it takes to notice how different I am, I guess. Just that--the unfailing eyes. Those eyes that by some sheer grace belong to me. Those eyes I don't deserve. But there they are--and I guess they make me look like a queen. I guess that's enough, yeah?

Anyway, I got to eighth period, and Jay wasn't there. He's on the sound board, so I guess that makes sense--he was probably helping clean up with the Multicultural Festival. This other boy I give a pretty hard time, Peter, a friend of his was there. I told him about the pouncing and he laughed and joked that Jay's 'a touchy-feely kind of guy' and that maybe I should make more contact. I laughed and said honestly that last time--uh, Valentine's Day--that maybe I had pushed him too far. He said 'maybe'.

So I toyed with him a little more, until this girl who I had seen but never really noticed told me, and quote, to "Leave him alone". What I wanted to say was that Peter's a big boy and he can defend himself *IF* he takes offense, but what I said was "Oh, but it's so much fun." I walked up to her, just like I had to Mary, and stretched my fingers and hands, bridging the gap between us, and when she looked up at me, I saw--

I saw fear in her eyes.

I stumbled in my words, and then awkwardly tried to bring back the conversation to something else, namely, when she got here. After about a minute, I simply left. I went to talk with a friend of mine, Brell, and tried to forget what had just happened. To put it out of my mind. But I don't think I'll be able to, not for as long as I live. Her face is etched into my mind, her eyes, and myself in her eyes. I'm horrified.

But is that so surprising, really? I don't know what to make of this, but I don't consider myself a cruel person--although I have my relentlessness, I don't go out of my way to hurt people or to make them unhappy. Just awkward, and only sometimes. I like to make people happy. I like to see them smile through their tears at a piece of paper with their name at the top and mine at the bottom. I like to hear people laugh at my often mad humor. I like to hug my friends hello and goodbye, because I don't think I could ever get enough of them. And I know I'm going to miss them so much one day that I just want to...let them know I care.

But there is a side of me that I don't like seeing that is assertive and arrogant and frankly, a little frightening. It's the side that kept me alive in middle school, that scares the ******** out of jocks who think I'm just a chubby little gay boy they can pick on. It's an animal side of me, and only a few people have seen it more than once, usually in their defense. Like with Haley. Henson, too, but I guess with both, they helped me tame that side of me. Really, the flirtatiousness is nothing next to the aggressiveness I used to emit. I don't think you could really understand unless you had been there; unless you had known me, and seen the things I was capable of. I have a lot of bad karma to pay off, and I wonder if I'll ever be in the clear.

So. I guess just like everyone else, I'm angel and animal together, with a touch more of demon than I like to admit. I guess human is a pretty good way to describe me these days, or so it would seem.

But you know, and I'm chuckling as I type this, I feel more like a weapon these days. Or a tool. Yeah, a big tool, especially today. No.... I feel like I'm starting to become what I was meant to become, and that scares me shitless sometimes, but it feels oddly right, too. As I feed myself to the fire, it grows, and I become the flame. I become my passions, and I become the instrument of change. I move with a strange economy of being, an odd unrelenting forwardness that cares little for propriety and less for pretense. As I begin to cede control to...something else inside of me, it's as if for the first time I can truly become an agent of change in my life. It's as though I'd been keeping my true feelings locked away for so long that I stopped changing because I didn't know what to change into. Let alone how.

But I think now that if I listen hard enough to myself, that I'll find all the answers. Maybe I just need to listen to all of me at once, instead of taking the one part without the other. Maybe together, the animal and the angel, and maybe even the demon, can work together to create something worth life. Maybe forge a body, or shape a soul, worthy of these eyes. Maybe true beauty is not only in finding natural beauty, but in the process of refining it, too.

I know that probably sound backwards, but I guess I never really took any claim to beauty because, as a child, I couldn't really create beauty. I could only find it in other things. In other people. While some of my friends became who they were meant to be, I was waiting. It's only now, too little and too late, that I come to the realization that perhaps in those times when we cannot be moved that we find a way to move ourselves. For most of my friends, they need to learn the opposite--that when they can't move themselves, it's alright to let themselves be moved by someone else. By someone who cares about them, or who cares about something they care about. There's no shame in taking pleasure in others so long as we acknowledge that the pleasure isn't only ours. There's a strange beauty to the give and get of any healthy relationship, one that I think most people don't really recognize. It's always shocked me how people interact. It's so wonderful to see two people together who take true pleasure in their company. It's wonderful, too, to see that in a larger group, too. But the intimacy between individuals is so pure and untainted sometimes that it simply breaks my heart. But in a wonderful way--like I find something new inside every time, and I'm better for the break.

And actually, I guess I've seen both at once, too. In a group of mine that's a lot like Tommy's--we're all individuals, all together, and sometimes the intimacy rings so clearly that I swear I can hear it, just on the edge of my hearing. In this, at least, all parts of me agree--this is good. It resounds through my heart, tearing down walls I didn't know I had, moving me in a way that I didn't know I could be moved, in a direction a compass can't point to. Sometimes, I remember, it's alright to be moved by others.
---
I'm still pretty divided sometimes. Like today, I guess. But things are changing. One day at a time. And I'm changing too--and it seems less daunting than it has. I think I'm ready--or at least I'm getting there.

But for now, some more Broken Saints.
-Leavaros Dapple/Andrew