7 Worlds and Worlds

Around 1998, I became fascinated with animation as art. For the next quarter of a century, anime would be a deep passion of mine.

Around 2005, I graduated from high school and struck out for a new city, only to find a slightly older version of the type of person I thought I had left behind. I had not stopped to think that the place I was trying to escape was not all that unique.

Around 2004, I fell in love for the first time. Was it less real because we never met in the real world?

Around 1999, I went to summer camp like all of the other men in my extended family. If only they had known how much pain would be caused by what was harmless fun for them. All of the other kids were united in fear and hatred of homosexuals; what they did not know is that their jokes stung me deeply in a way I would never be able to forget.

Around 2001, I was eating lunch alone in the middle school cafeteria. Someone ran into the room, and I overheard him telling another student that there had been a terrorist attack. He seemed so calm. Some kids were taken out of school; I was not.

Around 2008, I graduated from college. I had to do independent studies because I was so sick. I barely left my apartment during the final several months. Several professors were kind enough to accommodate my illness. This was one of the worst episodes of psychosis I have ever suffered, but it would not be the last.

Around 2000, I started to play computer games. This was the beginning of life inside a world within a world. Everything in reality had a better mirror in the virtual realm. I was stunned that I hadn’t realized this existed.

Around 2020, I read War and Peace. I found myself taken with the work, and it helped me to determine that going back to school to study literature was the right thing to do. It broke the barriers of what I had thought literature could be for me.

Around 1995, I had a best friend named Andrew who lived across the street. I would hear of him years later with a family of 4 children and be saddened to learn that he had become a member of a highly conservative church.

Around 2003, Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of New Hampshire. This started the growth of a kernel in my mind about what religion could be like. He was openly gay and Christian, making him a beacon of hope for people who thought the Church had cast them out.