Last updated 090813.

As far as I'm concerned, my life started when I met Khoa. Maybe someday I'll post a Part I detailing my childhood up to age 17.

Back in 2001, I had just finished my Junior year in high school, and was more depressed than usual because Best Friend (who I had known on and off since 7th grade) had just moved to Washington and I didn't have any real friends left to hang out with. My stepmother, being a member of the local Rotary organization, was trying to convince me to go to this "RYLA" camp thing. It's supposed to be a leadership award thing, where students who appear to be good leaders are sent on scholarship to have some workshops on leadership. Or something. I dunno. You know the situations where someone's like "I'm not going! You can't make me go!" and then the camera cuts to them stuck in a bus being carted away there? That's what happened to me.

So when I was there, I made it a point to let everyone know how much I hated being there. Standard greeting consisted of "Hi, my name is (name) and I hate being here!" What were they gonna do to me? In school, I have to be nice to everyone, but it's not like I'm being graded here, and it'll be over in a week.

Everybody there was obsessed with one of my major pet peeves, mainly that they would use your name while looking right at you. "Hi (name)! How's your morning been, (name)?" Drives me batty. I despise using names in the person's presence unless they are necessary to catch someone's attention.

These people even tried to play the name game with me. I was about half through the circle, and said "Hi, my name is (name) and I refuse to play this game!" And just kept saying that until they gave up and skipped past me. Everyone felt sorry for me, but kept trying to cheer me up in the only way a cheerleading blondepire knows how. All I wanted to do was sit in my cabin and read my Piers Anthony novels until the week was over. No no, they wouldn't have any of that. Jerks.

There were a certain number of mandatory workshops, and little free time each day. One of my workshops was an environmental thing, where we try to find ways to better the environment and motivate the rest of the camp to help. Like organize a car wash to raise money to save the rainforest and junk like that. They wanted to start a recycling program at the camp. They wanted me to go out and collect the cans from the various cabins for recycling. Did I mention it felt like 110 degrees outside?

I was pretty much hiding out in the cabin, drawing some dragons with glittery silver gel pens. One guy noticed how miserable I was, and offered to do it for me so I could stay in the cabin near the fan. In our off time, we spent a lot of time chatting about this and that, games and computers and anime and school, and found we had a lot in common.

There was a BBQ one day, and we sat around talking about video games. One thing was said that I will never forget. The subject of Chrono Trigger came up. He said that when he was a kid, he told his friends that he would marry the first girl he met who played Chrono Trigger, and that they laughed at him because girls don't play video games, and he'll never find one. This was before I told him that Chrono Trigger was one of my favorite games EVER, that I had played it so much I had all of my characters at maximum level with fully maxed out stats and could answer practically any question about it.

Of course, he was nervous when he found out about this, worried that he'd said too much, scared me off perhaps. But I was nervous too -- sure I'd found my knight in shining armor, my soulmate to rescue me from my constant soulcrushing depression. But I hadn't told him the most important thing about myself, the thing that could weird him out and maybe make me lose my chance.

I had yet to tell him that I'm a dragon. That in this human shell beats the heart of a winged raptor-like creature, that I long to feel the wind in my wings and the grass against my tail. But if he doesn't accept me for what I am, it isn't meant to be, right?

That night, there was a dance at camp. I got there before a lot of other people, due to a lack of anything else to do and wanting to see him again. If I had any doubts that he was the one for me, they were all banished when he showed up at the dance carrying a bouquet of origami lilies with his email address written on them. I still have them to this day, one of my greatest treasures. I pulled an origami crane out of my pocket (there were a bunch on the tables that day at lunch for some reason I forget and I grabbed a couple) and wrote my email address on it and gave it to him in return.

The dance was great, we spent a lot of time sitting outside on the balcony enjoying the cool air and talking about sailor moon and video games and each other's lives, about how his parents were very traditional and don't want him to get married until he's 30 years old with a degree from medical school. But eventually the music inside became too tempting. I think I heard YMCA starting up, and I can't resist going in for something like that. I remember the next song that played was "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down. We danced for a while, some fast and some slow, until the dance was over and people packed up. I took a pin out of my pocket (I know, I have some odd things in my pockets) and ran around manically popping all of the decorative balloons, and then we both went back to our cabins.

I could not sleep that night, so spent the time packing up and rehearsing in my mind how I would tell Khoa that I'm a dragon. The next morning, there was breakfast before we all went back to the buses to go home. When everybody else was packing, the two of us sat on a log in front of the cafeteria and talked. I told him that I'm a dragon, told him of my dreams of flight, of feeling the cool grass against my tail, how I wish I had my real claws back so I could pop balloons without having to carry a pin in my pocket all the time.

And... he accepted me for who I am. We talked about this and other things on the bus ride home. And when we got there to be picked up by our parental units, he kissed the back of my hand and went home. His parents were not to know of me, but as soon as we both got home, we were online chatting with each other. I told him to call me Kiryn, my dragon name, within the first week, and that has been my real name ever since as far as I'm concerned.

We got to visit rarely in that first year, but when we both went to college I was visiting him a lot more than I probably should have. I was going to Humboldt State and he was going to UC Davis, 5 and a half hours drive each way -- but I drove it, through the rain and wind and fog every other weekend just to spend time with him. After a year at Humboldt, I couldn't take it any more and moved down to Sacramento to be with him. After a year or so in Sacramento, we got an apartment together with some other friends in Davis. We had only lived together for a week or so when his parents drove up to basically abduct him because he was failing school and had to drop out.

I was stuck in Davis for a semester until I moved in with my older sister in Sunnyvale. I transferred to San Jose State while Khoa was taking classes at the local community college to earn enough credit to start classes at San Jose State as well. I moved to downtown San Jose after a year so I could walk to class and be away from my sister's disapproval breathing down my neck.

But my grades were declining because I simply didn't care about school, I didn't feel like I was really working towards anything because I didn't really want a job that required a biology degree, but I hated the thought of majoring in anything else. But mostly, I was tired of being under my father's control, always having to tell him exactly what I was doing, and never have any money for anything other than the bare essential rent and tuition and food (and even that was always given late, after I needed it a week ago) After my third semester at San Jose State, I dropped out and got a temp job testing games for Namco Bandai, which has led to my current career in the gaming industry. (Though I don't work at Namco any more, it is in my best interest to not name the company I am working for.)

I don't remember exactly when Khoa's parents found out about me, but it was before we graduated high school. They do approve of me, but they don't want us to get married until after Khoa graduates from college. I agree, since I'm not in a hurry to get married. It doesn't really change much. I wish I could bypass the whole "wedding" thing altogether, just be legally married without all that hooplah and ceremony. Unfortunately, both Khoa and his parents are adamant that there will be a ceremony. I plan on changing my legal name to Kiryn when that time comes.

At least his parents let me live in the same house with him (finally, after we'd been together each other for a good 7 years) though we do have separate rooms and sleep in separate beds. We spend every night on our computers, adventuring through Azeroth together.