The story of my journey to you is both equal parts astonishing and improbable. In fact, the story is so astonishing and so improbable that some would call it unbelievable.
I prefer to call it fate.
You see, it all started with a TV program — a show I actually watched called Star Trek: Voyager. I have always been on Team Star Trek over Team Star Wars, and being a completionist in matters such as these, I watched all the episodes. Voyager was unique in the Trek canon for the fact that it had a female lead as captain. For that and other reasons, I found the whole show to be interesting year after year.
Unfortunately, not all audiences agreed, and as the show approached the end of its third year of existence, ratings began to decline, and it was in very real danger of being canceled completely. Apparently, the show’s audience was majority female. So, the producers got together, and someone had an idea. The plan was to introduce a new character. One that could help draw more males to the show.
Auditions were held, and in 1997, an actress named Jeri Ryan was cast.
A former beauty pageant winner, Jeri lived in Illinois with her husband – an investment banker named Jack Ryan.
With Jeri spending most of her time in Los Angeles and Jack staying in Illinois, their marriage suffered and ended in divorce in 1999. Divorce and child custody records were sealed – with good reason. See, apparently Jack wasn’t a very good person, and the separation was acrimonious. Jeri stayed on the show until its end in 2001, and Jack eventually turned to politics.
A few years later, in 2004, Illinois had an election for an open US Senate seat, and Jack Ryan ran as a Republican. His challenger was a little-known Illinois State Democrat – a man with a Muslim name and a strong stance against the war in Iraq – Barack Obama.
June 2004 – Jack Ryan’s divorce and custody records were unsealed which effectively ended his political career.
July 2004 – National Democratic leaders, sensing a rising star in Obama, invited him to give the keynote address at that year’s Democratic National Convention. It was this speech that introduced him to most of America, including myself, for the first time.
Obama would go on to easily win his election to the Senate but would announce his candidacy for President just two years later in 2007.
Now, I was born and raised in Texas, and although it is a majority Conservative state, living there didn’t seem that bad to me. The thought of leaving had never crossed my mind – until the 2008 US Presidential election that is.
See, some of my friends, neighbors, and co-workers simply couldn’t handle the idea of a Black man running for the highest office in the country. An election that was supposed to unite the country and move us to a post-racial society actually did the opposite. I had people walk up to me and shake my hand because of my Obama St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt, and I had a guy try to run me off the road because of my Obama bumper sticker. Man, it was a mess. Side note: I really liked that shirt though; I wonder what ever happened to it?
So, it was around this time that I started thinking that maybe I didn’t want to live there anymore.
I watched the election returns with some friends, and I silently made note of each state that voted Democrat that year. I was making a list of less-insane places to live. The plan was to decide on a place and create a goal of moving out of state as soon as was feasible. Obama went on to (improbably) win the election in 2008, and I went on to lose my job in 2009.
Suddenly, I had the freedom to move wherever I pleased.
And I chose a place completely foreign to me: Portland, Oregon. That’s where I moved even though I had no friends, family, or job prospects there.
But, I guess fate wasn’t done yet.
When I rented my first apartment, the manager suggested I apply for a job at a company right down the road. So I did. Within a few weeks of my arrival, I had applied for and gotten a job there doing the exact same work I did down in Texas.
I had fun in Oregon, and I met some really good people – one of whom was a funny girl named Ian. We had some good times working together, and everything seemed to be going well.
But there was a problem; I was bored. I quickly got tired of doing the same job that I had been doing previously in Texas. So, when the opportunity arose to leave, I took it. But, crucially, not without first making social media connections with some of my new-found friends.
Some time passed, and one day I found myself mindlessly scrolling through the FB feeds and profiles of friends. I found Ian’s profile, and while checking to see what she was up to, fate stepped in again when I glanced over at the profile pictures of her friends.
It was then that I saw a picture that stopped me in my tracks. I looked at it, blinked, looked some more, rubbed my eyes, and looked some more.
By now, you know what I saw.
And here’s where the story starts to get difficult for me to tell. It’s not that I was at a loss for words. Far from it. I had plenty of words in my head at that moment.
I’m normally pretty good with words and the written word in particular, but at this point in the narrative, words begin to fail me. The effect this picture had on your humble narrator is impossible to overstate.
I could be lazy and just say some lame cliché like, “This girl is very pretty; let me send her a friend request.”, but that would be disingenuous and a wholly inaccurate representation.
The fact is, there are no superlatives that can accurately describe what feelings your picture evoked in me.
I. Was. Stunned.
I swore I could hear an orchestra playing just outside. And one of the finest examples of English Romanticism passed through my head.
Of course, I didn’t just send a friend request to a random stranger based on looks alone. I clicked around a bit, and as soon as I saw a collage of images from Amélie, that was all I needed to convince me.
So, I sent the friend request. You accepted it. And you have been living rent-free in my head ever since.
And now that I know you are just as beautiful on the inside as you are gorgeous on the outside, I know it was a good decision after all.
Did I really fall in love with a picture?
Yes.
Am I better off because of it?
Absolutely.