IT"S ALL BECAUSE OF HIM!

1 year ago today, I was sitting at home in Victorville, CA flustered, depressed and unknowing. I ran a group on the MySpace network for Gay and Lesbian Roman Catholics. It was a group giving an open space and opportunity for people gay catholics, such as myself to network, rant, rave, express their feelings (often feelings of disgust towards our Church)within our circle. Whenever time would allow, I would sit down and do a MySpace user search. The search criteria would be made open to gender, age, location but I would specify "gay" for sexual orientation and "Catholic" for religious preference. I also would select, "most recent online users" so that I would encounter new individuals each time I conducted a search. Every time I did so, thousands upon thousands of MySpace users would pop up. I wouldn't really pay much attention to their profile details or even their profile photo. I would simply open their profile in a new window, and paste a generic message that I had used for months, then send it off. The message introduced myself...telling people a little bit about myself, my goal and quick summary of the group. I extended an open invitation to the everyone. Now that I think about it, I probably sent that message to certain people multiple times!

Not everyone joined the group, understandably. Sometimes I would receive a message back in response, often times I wouldn't. If I did, it was typically a brief praise for taking the time out to promote and moderate such a group and other times it was people telling me to "suck a fat dick" or "I hate the Church and everything "it" stand for". My favorite actually was the, "How can you be Gay and Catholics...that's pathetic". But on Monday July 14, 2008 I got quite a different response. It read something along the lines of

"Thank you for taking the time to invite me to your group. Unfortunately I don't think it would be right for me to join but I think it's awesome that you have such a group and if you ever need my support, holla at me".

That's not exactly what it said, but somewhere along the lines. Typically I wouldn't reply back to a message along that lines, but that day I did. I replied back saying something along the lines of, "Thank you so much for your recognition, it helps to know that my time doesn't go unnoticed. Sorry to hear the group isn't for you and I hope I didn't cause you any insult by my mass email. If you ever want to chat, or have any questions I can answer, please don't hesitate to contact me. My name is Eddie...what's yours?"

At this time, I had just gotten out of a 7 year relationship and by all means WAS NOT LOOKING. Truth be told, at this point I still hadn't opened up this guy's profile to read his details or look at his photo album...little did I know I was talking to a beautiful, funny, creative, and Mariah Carey and Good Charlotte loving, 26 year old named Paul who lived in Virginia Beach, VA.

Several more emails were sent over the next 24 hours. Paul was just getting ready to start a new job. I was just starting of a Catholic charismatic prayer group, it was a busy summer, I was living with my ex....but somehow something was starting to develop as the emails transitioned to phone calls....long....all night phone calls.

Stay tuned for more posts that lead up to August 5, 2008....the beginning of our relationship!