NinTanDao64

Valentine’s Day “Forever Alone” posts.

It’s going to be another Valentine’s Day where I won’t have a significant other to devote an entire day to. Through every media outlet and social forum people are spamming my dashboards and walls with “Forever Alone” posts and whining incessantly, and I don’t see the point. If you really wanted to change that, you’d make a move and at least allow change to come into your life. Up to this point in my life I’ve been absolutely content with loneliness, only because I thought being by myself was the only path laid out before me. The moment that limitation was removed a heavy weight landed upon me. For the first time ever, I actually want someone to care for, and feel the same way about me. I’m in no rush though, being “found” is an experience that I’ve yet to encounter, and there’s no need to complain about it not happening to me this year.

Putting together ideas for a novel series, need feedback! :)

For the past 1.5 years whenever I have the spare time to think about anything for extended periods (typically while I’m laying in bed trying to fall asleep), I’ve been trying to put together ideas for a potential video game plot should I ever somehow achieve my lifelong dream of becoming a game developer. However, I figured since I have so much free time, why not take some of those ideas and write a book and see if the creative juices are still flowing? I’ve got the big picture sorted out for the story, including the main characters, antagonists, the general settings, but it’ll take a lot of time to come up with plausible scenarios to piece everything together.

The story’s title for the time being is “Aether” until I can come up with something better. It focuses around four characters named Chase, Esther, Meagan, and Kyle, all of which are ages 13-15. The four of them stumble upon a secret passage to a hidden part of Chase’s house through his father’s study and among the many strange objects they find is a glowing stone floating on top of a pedestal. One of them later finds a switch on the wall, and upon flipping it, the stone engulfs the entire room with a bright blue light that expands, reaching all four of them, then contracts back, de-materializing all of them and transports them to a faraway place.

It is unknown to the reader whether or not this is a whole new world or a varied dimension that exists alongside the earth as we know it. Within the atmosphere of this new world exists an essence known as Aether, which makes conjuring magic possible. As the story unfolds, the four will discover that several thousand years before their time, this strange new world and the earth that we live on, used to be one. Back then, there were 2 subcategories of humans (For the time being these do not have names, so I’ll just refer to them as good guys and bad guys for simplicity). There are the humans that we’re all familiar with, but within a world where Aether exists, they’re capable of casting spells without the need for an incantation and are incredibly adept at using destructive abilities without the drawbacks that typically come with them. During this time, their leaders are attempting to wipe the world clean of the good guys, and the largest threat that stands in their way is the floating kingdom in the sky, where the royalty for the good guys reside.

Within the royal family includes the king, the queen, and their five children. The two oldest of those are Lufanse and Gwen, who will be the ones the reader will see the most of. Their adviser and caretaker, Zenyx, is the one who’s made enough advancements through his research that made the majority of the city’s technology possible. He’s known to be the most knowledgeable and influential individual in the world. In simple terms, he’s a fucking genius. The bad guys somehow find a way to break through the city’s defenses (can’t reveal that, it’s a spoiler :D) and lock the royal family within the castle. Zenyx brings all of them into the armory, where his prototype time machine is located. It wasn’t fully ready for use but they had no choice. The entire family goes through the portal that forms, and the unstable rift within splits all of them apart, leaving them scattered in different eras. Zenyx himself rushes back to his research facility and activates a series of global-scale weapons that he wasn’t sure would work the way he planned. 

As a result, the entire planet was duplicated, the clone being recreated in a different galaxy, except completely devoid of Aether. This duplicate is the earth as we know it. All of the “bad guys” are transported there with no memory, and our own timeline and history originates from them. The floating city lost its capacity to remain airborne and was sinking for a destructive crash landing, but Zenyx engulfs the entire floating isle within a barrier and sets a timer to lock it away in another pocket of existence, and only he has the devices to get back to it. Before the city vanishes, Zenyx uses his own personal time travel device to travel forward.

The reader will find out that the scattered family take part in a lot of unexplained events involving mythology that a lot of us are familiar with, including the origins and uses of Pandora’s Box, the Lost City of Atlantis, and Arthurian Legend.

Long story short, some of the “bad guys” chased after them through the portal and are after something very important from them. I know it all sounds messy, crazy, and out there, but I promise it’ll be a lot better when I put it all together! :D

So what do you guys think?

Please Don’t Go

It’s been too long since I’ve had a dream I could actually hold onto and replay in my mind when I wake up. They generally come in fragments, without any particular meaning, plot, or chronological order involved really. At around 8PM earlier, I decided to lay down for a bit and gather my thoughts, ponder upon how things have turned out the way they are. I didn’t realize how tired I was, for all I knew I never fell asleep.

Laying there on the bed, alone as usual, that desire to have someone to hold onto has always been there but I’ve gotten so used to ignoring it I’ve forgotten how painful it is to acknowledge it. I curled up on my side, wrapping my arms around my legs. I wasn’t cold, but was experiencing a deep sense of loneliness and emptiness. Thinking too hard and dwelling on the past wasn’t doing me any good, so I decided to put my earphones on and listened to my Favorites playlist on my iPod to ease the tension. I curled back up, and the ghosts of my past kept pushing forth to the frontlines of my thoughts, poking fun at me, mocking my sadness. I didn’t take note of it, but tears slowly started crawling down my cheek. 

Suddenly, I felt two arms from behind me slide under my my own, and held onto my body gently. I was scared to say the least, but I could tell whoever it was didn’t mean any harm, in fact, seemed to give me the message that whoever it was seemed to understand how I was feeling. The warm embrace calmed me enough to weaken my grip on my legs and I slowly stretched myself into a comfortable position. I slid my hands above the mysterious person’s right hand, it was warm and soft to the touch. I felt a warm breath run down my neck, it was repeating at slow intervals. Had the person fallen asleep? It didn’t matter, I didn’t want to let go, whatever was happening, it felt so much better than being alone. Within moments I fell asleep myself. I don’t know how long we were both there, but I wanted time to slow down.

I felt the hands slowly move away from beneath my own, and the mysterious person started moving away from the bed. 

“Please don’t go …”

Loneliness’s cold bitter embrace came back; I felt like small shards were impaling me at rapid speeds all over my body. I curled back up again, unaware of the tears pouring down my face, and squeezed my legs again, hoping the person would come back.

Moments later I woke up. I’ve never felt so confused waking up on my own bed before. I had to accept that it was just a dream, as lucid as it was. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out at what point the whole experience became a dream. That didn’t matter though, it was over. I sat up and noticed my pillow was half soaked. Do I really cry during my sleep? I laid back down, feeling assured that I didn’t have to be alone forever anymore. Whoever it was that showed up my dream is waiting out there somewhere, and I’ll eventually find him.

I came out to my Mom last week, after 16 years of hell

On the night of December 8, 2011 I finally mustered the courage to tell my mom what was eating at me my entire life. I’ve always known that I was different, I think I first suspected something when I was about 7 years old. Back then, I almost never spoke a word to anybody, communicating with another person was awkward. Probably because I never had one on one conversations with my parents. They did a good job teaching me and my siblings right from wrong and disciplining us, but we simply never talked, so to this day both of my parents still seem like strangers to me.

Even though I didn’t speak out much, I was incredibly observant, it was the only way I learned and picked up new things. One thing I quickly noticed from watching a lot of TV as a child was that the boys always fell for the girls. I began to recognize it as the norm; that it has to be that way because the majority practice it. It was early spring when my first grade class was going outside for recess, my eyes caught a peek at a boy that was two grades higher than I was. I couldn’t stop staring at him, and I couldn’t explain to myself why. It was an anomaly, a complete mystery to me. Wasn’t I supposed to experience something like this toward the opposite gender? I didn’t tell anybody, because I figured it was something that would change over time as I got older. Everyday at recess I always tried to look for that same boy. It was a desire I couldn’t explain, I simply had to see him for a couple seconds whenever I got the chance.

The next school year, our family moved, and I thought since I’d no longer see that same boy then my emotions towards other boys would dissipate. That maybe, it was just a unique situation toward that one particular person. It didn’t. I quickly found myself feeling the same way toward other boys. It was killing me inside that I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I was shy to a dangerous extreme, talking to somebody about my feelings was never an option to me, because it was never something my parents encouraged or kept themselves open to.

When you’re young, the three worst possible things you could be are fat, ugly, or gay. If any of those describe you then you’re an easy target for all your peers. Kids are vicious, as long as it’s not themselves getting hurt then they think it’s okay. I still clung on to that hope, that maybe one day my feelings toward boys would go away. I hated that feeling of paranoia, that maybe somebody out there suspected it. I did whatever I could’ve to suppress any signs of my homosexuality.

It took me until I was in the 7th grade to finally be able to look in the mirror and convince myself: “Holy fuck … I really am gay”. There was no way I could let anybody know, especially my parents. My family is full of devout Catholics, they wouldn’t allow it. They wouldn’t understand, they’d hate me. Not to mention, I wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with my own mom and dad. I needed someone to confide in though, I was absolutely horrified of the revelation that just came to me. Up to that point in my life, I had been fairly sure of who I was and what I wanted in life. Realizing that having an attraction to other boys wasn’t going away frightened me in ways I couldn’t control. I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t a monster, that being the way I was wasn’t a punishment as a result of my own doing.

A couple days later, a circle of my closest friends had a conversation that segued into the topic of gays. One of them whom I trusted and considered to be one of the best people to go to when I needed advice admitted that, if he found out one of his friends was gay, that he’d never want to talk to them again, because it was disgusting and people that choose to act that way don’t deserve to live. What was worse, the rest of them seemed to agree. I was appalled. I had thought I knew my friends better than that, I trusted them. I felt so betrayed. My trust toward my friends disappeared from existence that day.

As High School was coming closer, my parents started bringing up the topic of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’ve always loved video games to death, and dreamed of becoming a game developer. However, my dad had always emphasized that video games are for children, and that I needed to eventually quit playing them as I got older. Objectively speaking, it made sense to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to believing that I would ever quit playing them. So, I lied to my parents and told them I wanted to become a doctor.

All of this paved way for the worst 7 years of my life. I told my parents I wanted a more challenging education, so signed up for the IB Program at a school on the other side of town. In all honesty though, I told them this so that I could start over anew, at a school where nobody knew me. I wanted to make myself as invisible as possible. I couldn’t bear the thought of anybody knowing my secret. When High School started, I quit all my extra-corricular activities. Band, competitive chess, cross country, choir, writing poetry, drawing, all of it. I lost hope in friendships, I couldn’t look at people the same way anymore, no matter how nice they seemed. Depression slowly crept it’s way into my life. The worst part of my day was waking up, knowing that I had to spend the rest of the day pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Trying my best to study toward being a doctor, trying to earn my father’s acceptance, concealing my deepest darkest secret of being a homosexual.

It hurts. I thought I was strong enough to keep it all bottled up for the rest of my life. I decided to myself that I would live a lonely life; that love wasn’t meant for the likes of me. I couldn’t look in the mirror without seeing scum staring back at me. Going to school studying subjects I had no interest in, seeing people I couldn’t help but stare at and knowing that they couldn’t reciprocate those feelings back to me was absolute hell. Seven years of this. Seven years of desperately wanting something, and having to convince myself that I was never going to get any of it. Constantly wishing for something unattainable eventually left me numb. I became socially nonreactive, unattached, a hollow shell of a human.

In late July 2008, my sister had contracted an unknown illness that we couldn’t pinpoint the source from. She had lost the ability to feel hungry, and her limbs suddenly started becoming numb over a couple of days. We had thought it was just a cold at first, but things got out of hand so we took her to the hospital. That very night she had a heart attack. Her body was slowly shutting down, one organ at a time. On August 4th, 2008, she passed away. I was so angry at everything. The one person that I felt didn’t deserve anything bad was taken away from us. I would’ve given anything. ANYTHING to trade my life for hers. I felt like I wasn’t worth anything. The worst part was, there was nobody to blame. The disease just came and took her from us.

Everybody has a limit, and I finally crumbled during the 3rd year of college. I was already running on empty, but over time Death had become such a close friend of mine that suicide seemed like the best idea ever. I wanted release, to get away from it all. Waking up to another day of being someone I wasn’t was too unbearable. So I followed my instincts. I ran away. It was mid November, freezing cold outside. I just ran out, didn’t take a jacket, didn’t bring my phone. Just the clothes I was wearing, my car keys and my wallet and drove. I didn’t care about where I was headed, I just drove. By the end of the night, I had drove from Wichita, Kansas to Denver, Colorado. I was exhausted. I wanted it to end right there that night. I found a store that was still open late at night, and purchased a large kitchen knife. I wasn’t scared of death at all, I was ready to disappear. When I held the blade toward my chest, the same scenario kept replaying itself in my mind.

I kept seeing the moment my mom ran into the room where my sister laid on her deathbed, where we all had to accept that she was no longer with us. Her eyes were half open, mouth not quite fully shut, it was evident there was no life left in her. My mom pushed everyone out of the way, crying, yelling out of sheer anguish at what she saw in front of her. She tried desperately to find warmth on my sister’s body, all the while begging for her not to give up, unable to bring herself to accept that she was gone. It was heart wrenching, I felt like my soul was split in two, that happiness was never going to be possible for the family ever again. Repeating those images made me realize that if I went through with killing myself, my mom would have to experience it all over again, leaving her with only one child. I wanted to so badly, but slowly lost grip on the blade. I couldn’t bear the thought of her finding out that she had lost me as well.

At the same time, I didn’t wanna go back. Driving away from home felt so relaxing, I felt so free, I wanted to keep going, not caring where I ended up. The next morning I set out toward California, where my mom’s side of the family lives. The drive was long, but I enjoyed every minute of it. There was nobody around to tell me what to do or where to go. For the first time in years I felt like I could go somewhere without having to carry so much weight on my shoulders.

When I arrived, I was frightened at how everyone would react. I was after all, showing up out of the blue unannounced. I was lost in Sacramento for a good 7 hours, so decided to find a public library where I had internet access. Luckily, my brother was on Facebook so I wasn’t uncomfortable approaching him with the situation. He gave me Uncle Thien’s phone number, whom I had to call 3 times before he finally decided to pick up. 30 minutes later he showed me the way to the house, where for the first time ever I divulged my feelings to someone. I had always been content with bottling everything up, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid to open myself up a little to him. However, I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was gay. After that talk, I fell right to sleep. I was so tired after driving for 1.5 days straight without rest. They called up my parents that night, who were frightened to death. They had no idea what had happened to me for the past 2-3 days since I never came home, and didn’t bring my phone. To my surprise, they were understanding enough to let me stay in California.

The next year was mind-blowing. For the first time I felt relaxed. I didn’t have to pretend to be anybody else but myself. I had free time to compose myself, and slowly become stable. From time to time the suicidal thoughts still returned, but I didn’t tell anybody about it.

On September 30, 2011, I felt ready to tell somebody. I came out to Uncle Thien and his girlfriend, Kim. They were very supportive and understanding. I felt so relieved; the heavy burden I dragged alongside myself for so long started to feel so much lighter. Even though they were on my side, they warned me that not everybody in the family was going to be so accepting of the idea, and that I needed to stand my ground.

Last week on December 8th, 2011, my mom flew down here for Uncle T’s wedding. She was only staying for a couple days and leaving back to Kansas. I felt ready, but I didn’t know if she was. I’ve never had a close relationship with my parents, because we never talked. The thought of talking about personal things with them was weird, I had always confided my feelings with online friends when I needed advice. As much as I felt I knew my mom, I simply didn’t know how she’d react. If things were going to get better between the two of us though, she had to know. There was a lot of crying, awkward silences, and references to our broken past, but in the end she was okay with it. She’s still very misinformed, but I don’t blame her for it. I’m patient. I think she still believes that there’s still a possibility that someday I might become straight, give her a daughter in-law and grandchildren, but I didn’t want to throw it all at her so fast.

Things are slowly getting better now, I’m finally able to look in the mirror and not feel disgusted at the person looking back. I’ve come to terms with my sexuality, and am no longer ashamed to tell others. However, my dad still has yet to know, so I’m a little afraid of how he’ll react. He’s very traditional, and very conservative, and has a temper to go with it.

Man, this was a really long and poorly written post now that I’ve proofread some of it. Maybe I’ll put it in vlog form in the near future for better clarity.