Lots of thoughts.
Dear Thay-chan,
Today I woke up with my head full of memories from my childhood. You see, back when I was in the middle of second grade, the base where my father worked closed and we were required to move to another state, without being given a lot of notice. It was a very difficult time for me as a young child.
At that time, I had a very active community life. We went to church every week. I had a best friend, Christina, at school, and a best friend, Sylvia, at home. The neighborhood had a lot of children my age, and my mother did day care at our home. There were always lots of kids and their parents around, and it was a good atmosphere. My father built a swing set in our front yard which we all loved, and one day he surprised me with a play house he built in the backyard. It was half playhouse and half storage, really, but it was one of the most wonderful things to have a tea party in.
I remember when we moved, it was a very difficult time. My parents didn't want to go, and were resentful of being forced to move. They lost a lot of money on their home, which they were forced to sell at price much less than it was worth. I was confused and upset, as a kid, who thought that maybe my parents could change us having to move, but when I asked I was rebuffed with a "well, do you think we want to move either?"
One day I came home from school to find my father ripping down the swing set. I was very upset, and I remember running over to him, astonished that he was taking it down. My parents hadn't talked to me about it, and somehow I assumed that things would magically stay the same, even though I knew we were moving sometime soon. I ran over to my father, crying and begging him to stop destroying the swing set. I remember that he didn't even pause, despite the carrying on I was doing. He didn't bend down to me and explain what he was doing or why it was necessary. As an adult I can guess that he was told to do so, but as a child it was bewildering and frightening. He just kept mechanically taking it down, and when the parts wouldn't come apart, he hit them until they did. For a little girl, this was a very traumatic experience. Mom told me some time afterwards that we would build a new swing set at the new place we lived.
My playhouse disappeared the next day. At least it wasn't torn down in front of me.
My mother suggested I bring her camera to school and take pictures of my friends, since I wouldn't be seeing them anymore. I took pictures of everyone in my class, even the boys. I took a lot of pictures of my two closest friends, Christina and Abby, and they took pictures of me with them too. We tried really hard to smile in the pictures, but we were crying so hard it was difficult to try and smile. None of us were allowed to use the telephone back in those days, and had no idea about how to mail a letter.
Somebody gave me a kids book about a girl who had to move away from her friends, and how they became penpals. It might have been my mom who gave me the book. I fell in love with the idea and my friends promised to write too. For a while I was able to send letters back and forth with my friend Christina. It wasn't the same as being there, but it was at least something. It eventually became hard to do, because I didn't understand how the stamps worked or how to acquire them, and mom stopped helping me with posting them. But that was later.
A lot of my friends had parents who were restationed and they didn't know what their addresses would be. I fell out of touch with those friends completely.
I remember that we moved suddenly. We stayed in a hotel room until the new base housing unit was ready for us to move in. I remember making valentines in the hotel room, for my friends at school. It was my mom's idea. I used doilies and crayons. It was fun. I never got to give the valentines out, because we never went back to my school.
When we moved into the new house, it was in the middle of second grade. I was still very upset by the move, but was excited that I might make new friends. I went to the new school, and was friendly to everyone, but no one was interested in making a new friend. They had already made the friends they wanted, though a lot of them kept to themselves because they didn't know when their families would be uprooted again. I ended up just going along with what the class was doing, but made no new friends. At recess I played by myself, and ran around up and down this big pile of dirt in the recess ground, being loud and noisy by myself. I couldn't tell you the name of a single student from that school in the second grade or the third grade. It was completely forgettable.
I asked my parents to put up the new swing set. They didn't promise anything. I asked again a few months later, and they said that the base regulations said they couldn't put one up. I believed them until one of our neighbors, who had unfriendly children, put up a swing set of their own. Then I knew my parents were lying. I asked again, and was told they didn't want to put one up.
There was a playground, a small one, not too far from our new place, but it wasn't very good. It had swings, but the seat was old and weathered, and had big cracks in the rubber. The seats were held up by rusty chains, huge chains, that went up and up and up. I played on it anyways, sometimes, when I had a long-sleeved shirt on, so I could swing without cutting my hands on the chains. It was frightening to play on though, because if you weren't careful, you would go up way too high and it could dump you out onto the ground from high up. I was always scared of that because no one came to watch me when I played outside, and no one could hear me crying when I got hurt.
In fourth grade, I made two friends, Opal and Melina, but it was a little rocky because my social skills had withered considerably, and theirs weren't that great either. We played together and were annoying together, and they both moved at the end of the fourth grade, along with a number of our other classmates.
In fifth grade, I met a new friend, Arielle, and we played during the summer. We went to the public pool a few times and played with toys together. Her parents were in some sort of custody battle, so I saw her rarely, but she was a great friend. One day we had a yardsale and sold a lot of our old toys and things. Her father offered to take us to a water park, and my mom said I could go. It was one of the most fun days ever, and I spent all my yard sale money on games and nicknacks. We played there so long that it got dark and the park closed. We were some of the last ones leaving. It was a wonderful day!
Arielle's dad brought me home, where my dad and mom were waiting with angry faces. I didn't understand why they were angry at us. We had gotten permission to go, after all. After that, I was sent straight to bed. I wasn't allowed to play with Arielle when her her dad was around again. I found out later that when my dad got home, he had told my mom that they didn't know Arielle's dad well enough, and if anything happened to me it was her fault. Mom told me this a few years later. Mom told me a lot of stuff you shouldn't tell a kid. I played with her a couple times after that, but I never saw her dad again, and then one day she was just gone.
When we moved to the new place, mom looked for a new church she liked. We went out every weekend to try a different church. Some of them were nice, but we never went back to the same one twice. After a year she stopped trying. We never went back to a church regularly again.
Before we moved, I was enrolled in ballet and tap dance, like most little girls in the area. I liked tap best and told my mom we should drop the ballet class so I could just do tap. She dropped ballet without a peep. When we moved, there were no dance classes at all. There were, however, violin classes. We went every other weekend, the long 2-hour drive up to see my violin teacher. We did this for years.
I wasn't very motivated for violin, as I had always wanted to play flute, not violin, and whenever the strings were slightly off-pitch it would drive my ears crazy until I could fix it. It was a wholly frustrating experience, though the songs I did learn well were fun to play... once everything was properly tuned, anyways. I am still flabbergasted that mom went to so much effort to have me play violin.... when so many other, simpler interests of mine were stamped out without a thought. When finally my mom agreed to let me have flute lessons, they didn't last long. I wasn't allowed to have a flute of my own, so practice was limited to the 30 minutes a week I saw the instructor. He wasn't pleased with me as a student because I didn't practice. I look back now and realize I was set up to fail. Yet my mother took me, every other weekend, to violin study, and even once to violin camp. Why? It boggles my mind. I can't imagine she took any more joy in it than I did.
The one instrument I was allowed to play - only in school - was the drums. I loved the rhythm of them, and the feel of drumsticks, and the vibration they made when you played them. The problem was that the instrument you got during music class was luck-of-the-draw, and I was never taught to play by sheet music. I hated it when someone else got the drums as their instrument, and my parents outright refused to allow me to have drums, or even receive lessons. I still like the drums today, but like the flute, never learned how to play them properly. As for the violin, after nearly a decade of weekend trips to get lessons, my violin teacher decided to teach only local children from then on. I practiced a little on my own with mom's constant harping as my inspiration, until one day I put my violin away. After that, I promptly forgot everything I had learned... not without some small amount of malicious joy, I'll admit. Years afterwards, after I had moved out on my own, I decided to sell my violin and bows. While I was looking for a buyer, my mom asked to purchase them from me. "That way, if you ever want them back, you can buy them back from me," she said. I took the offer and the money. Who knows? Maybe someday I will be reminiscent of the violin-playing years.... stranger things have happened... and in the end, one buyer is as good as another. So thanks, mom.
I spent most of my middle school years isolated from the other children who just sort of... existed... around me. I read a lot, I was sick constantly, and I watched enough television I could have been a housewife. I played outside sometimes, but everything was physically difficult, and I would get tired so quickly. I came to discover, years later, that being sick all the time wasn't normal. Apparently, my parents didn't try to take me to a specialist to find out why I was constantly ill until I was in my teens. The reason why? The military quietly disapproves of service members' families being seen by non-military doctors.
It seems wild to me now, that my parents waited over a decade to have me seen elsewhere. It was so common for me to miss school due to illness that, although I didn't know it at the time, my parents were investigated for child abuse. I was constantly lightheaded, vomited so often that my mom worried about my eating, and always always, with a fever. Fever between 101 and 104 degrees.
I remember that, anytime I didn't want to go to a particular class, I would just go to the nurse office and tell her I didn't feel well. At the time, I thought it was my amazing talents in the art of raising my temperature that made it so that the thermometer always read "fever" for her. And if there was fever, I could go home. Of course, mostly I wanted to go to class. Life was too boring. And there wasn't much I could do. But once I got home, there was never anyone there. Mom would drop me off and I would lay down on the couch and watch daytime TV. It sucked. When I would watch tv too long, it got hard to ignore my body being nauseous or lightheaded. I would always lie there with a bucket nearby, so that I wouldn't dirty the couch if I had to throw up. Pretty abnormal, but at the time it seemed as normal as could be. I guess that's what happens when you're a kid... you just don't know better. Experience tells you that what happens during the course of the day is what is supposed to happen. Now, of course, I'm starting to realize how messed up that was.
When I was a teenager, we finally went to a specialist, who disgnosed the problem as a developmental issue- part of my insides hadn't grown quite precisely, and as a result, I was constantly having kidney infections. I got put on medication for about a year, maybe two, to keep the infection minimized. Eventually, once the infection was addressed, my body was able to finish growing properly and I outgrew the problem. But in the meantime, I was weak. Always.
I remember thinking I could bodybuild and get stronger. I used to take a gallon of water and lift it for exercise. But I couldn't lift it more than a few inches, and then I was exhausted for an hour. I wanted dumbells badly, thinking they would help me build strength.
I didn't find out until my 20's that the medicine that I was taking "for the fevers", according to my mom, was not just antibiotics.... it was steroids. No freaking wonder I was always weak! Steroids eat your muscle and do that to you. I find it sick that not only was I not told what I was taking (so what if I was still a minor?) but that I was actively lied to as to what the "medicine" was. While I can resent and distrust how I was treated, at the same time, whatever the harm was done, in the end I did outgrow the problem.... who can say if it was entirely wrong how things were gone about? I know that I'm horrified at how out-of-the-loop I was in my own medical care. Other than that... I don't know.
When I was about 14, I was taken off the prescription drugs as the doctor had decided I had outgrown the problem. At this point, I did start bodybuilding to a small extent. We moved from base housing and my parents purchased a house of their own again. I asked to be homeschooled, citing several newspaper articles regarding drugs found in the local high school, and stating that I didn't want any part of that. To my surprise, my parents agreed.
I ended up homeschooling myself. We received materials in the mail, and I completed them and we mailed them back. I was happy to be away from other people, and put in just enough presence when my parents returned from work to not be hassled. I had a lot of trauma to work through, and the quiet and isolation were critical to some of the recovery I needed.
At this point, I discovered the internet. It was a wonderful thing! Prior to this, I wasn't allowed computer access, because my brother had an interest in computers, which meant that anything related to computers was "his" and therefore I could not be taught it, or even have access to it. But now, while my parents were away, my dad's old computer became my territory.
I found newsgroups. I found search engines. And most importantly, I found Station8. Through S8 I started to try and interact with people again. I wasn't very good at it. What I was good at was being annoying. Eventually, I wanted to become less annoying. To this end I stopped interacting, and started lurking. I thought that by studying how others acted, I could act like them, and become "better"...
In late 1997, a user named Bahemut posted in the S8 CR that he wanted to create a clan of gargoyles, and all were welcome. He was calling it the Forgotten Clan. My heart pounded in my chest as I took the first daring step I had taken in quite some time. I asked to join. And he said yes.
During my time at the Forgotten Clan, I wanted to badly to impress. I was given a title "Clan Historian" and took it upon myself to learn all about the area the Clan would be based in- Fort Augustine, Florida. I met a wonderful person through the FC, who called himself Thaylog. In Thaylog, I found a friend who was kind and forgiving, inspiring and wonderful. A few months later, Thaylog informed me that he would be leaving the FC to start a new clan... Clan SteelClaw.
I remember being touched and afraid, and joyous, that this special friend of mine wanted me to come with him. I was really moved, and while I was afraid of leaving FC, I wanted even more to stay with my dear friend. I accepted and, along with five other members, Clan SteelClaw was formed.
It was the first time since back in early second grade that I felt truly at home. I still had a lot of problems to sort through, and not enough experience to draw on to succeed. But the clan members at SteelClaw succeeded in creating a place in my heart where I understood what friends and family were. For that, I am always grateful. And for that, I am lonely. These people, truly special people, are the joy of the world. And I miss them. They have always deserved better than me as a sibling. But no matter who deserves who... I am so glad to have met you, all. Thank you.
You guys are the best. Thank you! :)
I wish I could tell you how much.
Today I woke up with my head full of memories from my childhood. You see, back when I was in the middle of second grade, the base where my father worked closed and we were required to move to another state, without being given a lot of notice. It was a very difficult time for me as a young child.
At that time, I had a very active community life. We went to church every week. I had a best friend, Christina, at school, and a best friend, Sylvia, at home. The neighborhood had a lot of children my age, and my mother did day care at our home. There were always lots of kids and their parents around, and it was a good atmosphere. My father built a swing set in our front yard which we all loved, and one day he surprised me with a play house he built in the backyard. It was half playhouse and half storage, really, but it was one of the most wonderful things to have a tea party in.
I remember when we moved, it was a very difficult time. My parents didn't want to go, and were resentful of being forced to move. They lost a lot of money on their home, which they were forced to sell at price much less than it was worth. I was confused and upset, as a kid, who thought that maybe my parents could change us having to move, but when I asked I was rebuffed with a "well, do you think we want to move either?"
One day I came home from school to find my father ripping down the swing set. I was very upset, and I remember running over to him, astonished that he was taking it down. My parents hadn't talked to me about it, and somehow I assumed that things would magically stay the same, even though I knew we were moving sometime soon. I ran over to my father, crying and begging him to stop destroying the swing set. I remember that he didn't even pause, despite the carrying on I was doing. He didn't bend down to me and explain what he was doing or why it was necessary. As an adult I can guess that he was told to do so, but as a child it was bewildering and frightening. He just kept mechanically taking it down, and when the parts wouldn't come apart, he hit them until they did. For a little girl, this was a very traumatic experience. Mom told me some time afterwards that we would build a new swing set at the new place we lived.
My playhouse disappeared the next day. At least it wasn't torn down in front of me.
My mother suggested I bring her camera to school and take pictures of my friends, since I wouldn't be seeing them anymore. I took pictures of everyone in my class, even the boys. I took a lot of pictures of my two closest friends, Christina and Abby, and they took pictures of me with them too. We tried really hard to smile in the pictures, but we were crying so hard it was difficult to try and smile. None of us were allowed to use the telephone back in those days, and had no idea about how to mail a letter.
Somebody gave me a kids book about a girl who had to move away from her friends, and how they became penpals. It might have been my mom who gave me the book. I fell in love with the idea and my friends promised to write too. For a while I was able to send letters back and forth with my friend Christina. It wasn't the same as being there, but it was at least something. It eventually became hard to do, because I didn't understand how the stamps worked or how to acquire them, and mom stopped helping me with posting them. But that was later.
A lot of my friends had parents who were restationed and they didn't know what their addresses would be. I fell out of touch with those friends completely.
I remember that we moved suddenly. We stayed in a hotel room until the new base housing unit was ready for us to move in. I remember making valentines in the hotel room, for my friends at school. It was my mom's idea. I used doilies and crayons. It was fun. I never got to give the valentines out, because we never went back to my school.
When we moved into the new house, it was in the middle of second grade. I was still very upset by the move, but was excited that I might make new friends. I went to the new school, and was friendly to everyone, but no one was interested in making a new friend. They had already made the friends they wanted, though a lot of them kept to themselves because they didn't know when their families would be uprooted again. I ended up just going along with what the class was doing, but made no new friends. At recess I played by myself, and ran around up and down this big pile of dirt in the recess ground, being loud and noisy by myself. I couldn't tell you the name of a single student from that school in the second grade or the third grade. It was completely forgettable.
I asked my parents to put up the new swing set. They didn't promise anything. I asked again a few months later, and they said that the base regulations said they couldn't put one up. I believed them until one of our neighbors, who had unfriendly children, put up a swing set of their own. Then I knew my parents were lying. I asked again, and was told they didn't want to put one up.
There was a playground, a small one, not too far from our new place, but it wasn't very good. It had swings, but the seat was old and weathered, and had big cracks in the rubber. The seats were held up by rusty chains, huge chains, that went up and up and up. I played on it anyways, sometimes, when I had a long-sleeved shirt on, so I could swing without cutting my hands on the chains. It was frightening to play on though, because if you weren't careful, you would go up way too high and it could dump you out onto the ground from high up. I was always scared of that because no one came to watch me when I played outside, and no one could hear me crying when I got hurt.
In fourth grade, I made two friends, Opal and Melina, but it was a little rocky because my social skills had withered considerably, and theirs weren't that great either. We played together and were annoying together, and they both moved at the end of the fourth grade, along with a number of our other classmates.
In fifth grade, I met a new friend, Arielle, and we played during the summer. We went to the public pool a few times and played with toys together. Her parents were in some sort of custody battle, so I saw her rarely, but she was a great friend. One day we had a yardsale and sold a lot of our old toys and things. Her father offered to take us to a water park, and my mom said I could go. It was one of the most fun days ever, and I spent all my yard sale money on games and nicknacks. We played there so long that it got dark and the park closed. We were some of the last ones leaving. It was a wonderful day!
Arielle's dad brought me home, where my dad and mom were waiting with angry faces. I didn't understand why they were angry at us. We had gotten permission to go, after all. After that, I was sent straight to bed. I wasn't allowed to play with Arielle when her her dad was around again. I found out later that when my dad got home, he had told my mom that they didn't know Arielle's dad well enough, and if anything happened to me it was her fault. Mom told me this a few years later. Mom told me a lot of stuff you shouldn't tell a kid. I played with her a couple times after that, but I never saw her dad again, and then one day she was just gone.
When we moved to the new place, mom looked for a new church she liked. We went out every weekend to try a different church. Some of them were nice, but we never went back to the same one twice. After a year she stopped trying. We never went back to a church regularly again.
Before we moved, I was enrolled in ballet and tap dance, like most little girls in the area. I liked tap best and told my mom we should drop the ballet class so I could just do tap. She dropped ballet without a peep. When we moved, there were no dance classes at all. There were, however, violin classes. We went every other weekend, the long 2-hour drive up to see my violin teacher. We did this for years.
I wasn't very motivated for violin, as I had always wanted to play flute, not violin, and whenever the strings were slightly off-pitch it would drive my ears crazy until I could fix it. It was a wholly frustrating experience, though the songs I did learn well were fun to play... once everything was properly tuned, anyways. I am still flabbergasted that mom went to so much effort to have me play violin.... when so many other, simpler interests of mine were stamped out without a thought. When finally my mom agreed to let me have flute lessons, they didn't last long. I wasn't allowed to have a flute of my own, so practice was limited to the 30 minutes a week I saw the instructor. He wasn't pleased with me as a student because I didn't practice. I look back now and realize I was set up to fail. Yet my mother took me, every other weekend, to violin study, and even once to violin camp. Why? It boggles my mind. I can't imagine she took any more joy in it than I did.
The one instrument I was allowed to play - only in school - was the drums. I loved the rhythm of them, and the feel of drumsticks, and the vibration they made when you played them. The problem was that the instrument you got during music class was luck-of-the-draw, and I was never taught to play by sheet music. I hated it when someone else got the drums as their instrument, and my parents outright refused to allow me to have drums, or even receive lessons. I still like the drums today, but like the flute, never learned how to play them properly. As for the violin, after nearly a decade of weekend trips to get lessons, my violin teacher decided to teach only local children from then on. I practiced a little on my own with mom's constant harping as my inspiration, until one day I put my violin away. After that, I promptly forgot everything I had learned... not without some small amount of malicious joy, I'll admit. Years afterwards, after I had moved out on my own, I decided to sell my violin and bows. While I was looking for a buyer, my mom asked to purchase them from me. "That way, if you ever want them back, you can buy them back from me," she said. I took the offer and the money. Who knows? Maybe someday I will be reminiscent of the violin-playing years.... stranger things have happened... and in the end, one buyer is as good as another. So thanks, mom.
I spent most of my middle school years isolated from the other children who just sort of... existed... around me. I read a lot, I was sick constantly, and I watched enough television I could have been a housewife. I played outside sometimes, but everything was physically difficult, and I would get tired so quickly. I came to discover, years later, that being sick all the time wasn't normal. Apparently, my parents didn't try to take me to a specialist to find out why I was constantly ill until I was in my teens. The reason why? The military quietly disapproves of service members' families being seen by non-military doctors.
It seems wild to me now, that my parents waited over a decade to have me seen elsewhere. It was so common for me to miss school due to illness that, although I didn't know it at the time, my parents were investigated for child abuse. I was constantly lightheaded, vomited so often that my mom worried about my eating, and always always, with a fever. Fever between 101 and 104 degrees.
I remember that, anytime I didn't want to go to a particular class, I would just go to the nurse office and tell her I didn't feel well. At the time, I thought it was my amazing talents in the art of raising my temperature that made it so that the thermometer always read "fever" for her. And if there was fever, I could go home. Of course, mostly I wanted to go to class. Life was too boring. And there wasn't much I could do. But once I got home, there was never anyone there. Mom would drop me off and I would lay down on the couch and watch daytime TV. It sucked. When I would watch tv too long, it got hard to ignore my body being nauseous or lightheaded. I would always lie there with a bucket nearby, so that I wouldn't dirty the couch if I had to throw up. Pretty abnormal, but at the time it seemed as normal as could be. I guess that's what happens when you're a kid... you just don't know better. Experience tells you that what happens during the course of the day is what is supposed to happen. Now, of course, I'm starting to realize how messed up that was.
When I was a teenager, we finally went to a specialist, who disgnosed the problem as a developmental issue- part of my insides hadn't grown quite precisely, and as a result, I was constantly having kidney infections. I got put on medication for about a year, maybe two, to keep the infection minimized. Eventually, once the infection was addressed, my body was able to finish growing properly and I outgrew the problem. But in the meantime, I was weak. Always.
I remember thinking I could bodybuild and get stronger. I used to take a gallon of water and lift it for exercise. But I couldn't lift it more than a few inches, and then I was exhausted for an hour. I wanted dumbells badly, thinking they would help me build strength.
I didn't find out until my 20's that the medicine that I was taking "for the fevers", according to my mom, was not just antibiotics.... it was steroids. No freaking wonder I was always weak! Steroids eat your muscle and do that to you. I find it sick that not only was I not told what I was taking (so what if I was still a minor?) but that I was actively lied to as to what the "medicine" was. While I can resent and distrust how I was treated, at the same time, whatever the harm was done, in the end I did outgrow the problem.... who can say if it was entirely wrong how things were gone about? I know that I'm horrified at how out-of-the-loop I was in my own medical care. Other than that... I don't know.
When I was about 14, I was taken off the prescription drugs as the doctor had decided I had outgrown the problem. At this point, I did start bodybuilding to a small extent. We moved from base housing and my parents purchased a house of their own again. I asked to be homeschooled, citing several newspaper articles regarding drugs found in the local high school, and stating that I didn't want any part of that. To my surprise, my parents agreed.
I ended up homeschooling myself. We received materials in the mail, and I completed them and we mailed them back. I was happy to be away from other people, and put in just enough presence when my parents returned from work to not be hassled. I had a lot of trauma to work through, and the quiet and isolation were critical to some of the recovery I needed.
At this point, I discovered the internet. It was a wonderful thing! Prior to this, I wasn't allowed computer access, because my brother had an interest in computers, which meant that anything related to computers was "his" and therefore I could not be taught it, or even have access to it. But now, while my parents were away, my dad's old computer became my territory.
I found newsgroups. I found search engines. And most importantly, I found Station8. Through S8 I started to try and interact with people again. I wasn't very good at it. What I was good at was being annoying. Eventually, I wanted to become less annoying. To this end I stopped interacting, and started lurking. I thought that by studying how others acted, I could act like them, and become "better"...
In late 1997, a user named Bahemut posted in the S8 CR that he wanted to create a clan of gargoyles, and all were welcome. He was calling it the Forgotten Clan. My heart pounded in my chest as I took the first daring step I had taken in quite some time. I asked to join. And he said yes.
During my time at the Forgotten Clan, I wanted to badly to impress. I was given a title "Clan Historian" and took it upon myself to learn all about the area the Clan would be based in- Fort Augustine, Florida. I met a wonderful person through the FC, who called himself Thaylog. In Thaylog, I found a friend who was kind and forgiving, inspiring and wonderful. A few months later, Thaylog informed me that he would be leaving the FC to start a new clan... Clan SteelClaw.
I remember being touched and afraid, and joyous, that this special friend of mine wanted me to come with him. I was really moved, and while I was afraid of leaving FC, I wanted even more to stay with my dear friend. I accepted and, along with five other members, Clan SteelClaw was formed.
It was the first time since back in early second grade that I felt truly at home. I still had a lot of problems to sort through, and not enough experience to draw on to succeed. But the clan members at SteelClaw succeeded in creating a place in my heart where I understood what friends and family were. For that, I am always grateful. And for that, I am lonely. These people, truly special people, are the joy of the world. And I miss them. They have always deserved better than me as a sibling. But no matter who deserves who... I am so glad to have met you, all. Thank you.
You guys are the best. Thank you! :)
I wish I could tell you how much.