Heart Wishbringer & Joe Stravinsky

Joe joined Second Life in September 2004 hoping to find a creative outlet and make some friends, and I joined in November 2004 to have a way to hang out with my real life best friend, since we lived thousands of miles apart and were missing each other.

On January 11th, 2005 Both Joe and I ended up at the same nightclub in Second Life, and we were both dancing and looking around the room at all of the other avatars during a competition of "best avatar in black and white" which is a competition where the avatars dress up in black and white clothes and come dancing for 2 hours, while the DJs play music requested and the hosts try and get the avatars to participate in the competitions and vote for the best dressed males and females in the bunch.

I looked around the room and I saw Joe... his avatar was dancing in a haunting kind of dance, the animations smooth and sultry and his avatar was amazing to look at... in a crowd of beautiful tan people with blonde hair and blue eyes, stood Joe.. a 7 foot stark white vampire with red snake eyes and a long Mohawk, he wore a wet white t-shirt and tight black leather pants. I did a close up on his face with my camera and saw the vampire teeth and the dark circles around his eyes and was taken aback by the red snake eyes. I thought "Wow! What a hauntingly beautiful avatar!"

I sent him a private chat and we began talking, he was the kindest man I had met online and after the dance was over, we went away to the waterfalls on a sim by the house that I rented and him and I and some of my friends sat around chatting in private and getting to know each other. It was really wonderful to be there with him, we found that from the very beginning we had things in common, at first it was simple things, related to the game, like what we liked to do while playing Second Life, and we both loved to build, to decorate and to take pictures. We took a lot of photos of each other and then shared them with each other. We traded friendship cards, which means we acknowledged to one another that we wanted to keep the friendship, a friendship card gives players certain rights with regards to other players that you don't get without the cards, for example a friendship card keeps the players name on a list you can quick access for private messaging, it also allows you to teleport instantly to the person, if you need them in a hurry, and no matter where they are you can find them if you need them.. something you cannot do if you don't have a friendship card.

He showed me some photos that he had taken before and invited me to come see his castle, which I told him I would do soon.

Days past and he sent me private messages but my computer was very slow and laggy so I had a hard time sometimes keeping up with my private messages and what I was doing locally in the game. Often at times Joe thought I didn't have time for him or that I wasn't interested, and he would remove my friendship card and write me off as someone too busy or someone not interested in a friendship.

Over the period of the first 5 days, I would send him private messages and we would get together for a quick hello at his castle or at a mall, every time he would re-ask for my friendship card, and I thought to myself what kind of man would keep throwing my card away daily, I thought he liked me, why did he keep doing this? Little did I know it was because he had feelings for me and he didn't want to be hurt. I promised him I would give him my time and so one night we spent 10 hours sitting together in a virtual hidden room, high up in the sky over his castle in each other's arms... we just talked, that was all.. and we talked for hours and hours about our real lives.. I told him things I never told anyone else, and he told me things he didn't tell anyone else as well...

We began to find a strong connection, something like dejavu, something like a familiar feeling of love long ago lost, I felt a connection to him that I couldn't explain as if I just found the peace and tranquility of heaven in his arms, something I never felt with anyone else... even if they were just virtual arms... there was something significant happening. Even though I had already told him prior to this that I wanted nothing more than friendship, and that I had a boyfriend... I couldn't help the feeling that I felt inside, and little did I know he felt the same.

A couple of days passed and I told him we needed to part ways... and while we were apart during the two days I was helping a friend in Second Life get his girlfriend back, all I did was think of Joe...

I thought of him so much and I really hadn't realized he meant so much to me... until then... and on that day he sent me a private message and he told me he missed me terribly.. that he'd been crying, and that he needed me to love him... he wanted me to need him...

His avatar had been floating in the sky up above where I stood when he said this to me... and as he said this to me, he floated down slowly, to land just beside me.. my avatar fell to her knees... my heart in real life was pounding, I couldn't hardly breathe. He had just said to me the words that unlocked my heart... something no one to that day had ever said to me... like some secret magical words that were the ones I'd be waiting my whole life to hear... they were the words I always felt, the words I had always been saying in my mind since I could remember... "I need you to love me.. I want you to need me" I had never said them to anyone, but I always had them inside me, and I always knew that I would be alone my whole life, always feeling alone, because no matter how much I needed someone to love me, no matter how much I wanted someone to need me, I couldn't make anyone love me that way... and when he said those words, I realized... that not only did we have so very much in common in Second Life, and in our real lives.... we had more in common in our souls than could be explained away.... he at that moment, had my heart forever.

I told him right then that I would never leave his side.. that he had just spoken the words I had waited my whole life to hear,... the words that immediately emptied my heart of all loneliness, I had just found the one person on this planet who wanted the exact kind of love that I wanted, who needed the same love... who was willing to give it to me, if I would only love him back. And, I did love him... I truely knew I did love him from the day I met him in Second Life, the connection I felt for him was overwhelming, and I kept trying to tell myself to not be silly... but it wasn't silly.. it was magic.

From that day on I stayed in his arms on the game like a koala bear.. my little avatar had her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist and I stayed like that...

Every day he kept thinking ... "tomorrow... she will leave..... tomorrow, she wont be here anymore" He doubted that I would keep my word...

He never believed I could really love him as much as I did... he really always thought I would go... but I promised him I would never leave his side...

I held that promise... we married on January 31st, 2005 in Second Life over the same waterfalls we spent our first night at. It was a quick little ceremony, where we eloped, just us and a priest, we just wanted to commit to each other, we were very private people and didn't need a big showy wedding to prove to anyone that we were in love, we knew we were and that was all that mattered.

We lived in his castle together in Second Life... little nobodies... who were unknown to anyone in the game... and he built beautiful things, making pretty water fountains, and baths, and furniture, we tried to sell this furniture but we didn't have any luck.. even though it was really good... there were too many furniture stores in the game... so one day I asked him to make me a pair of shoes, I begged him really... told him that all of the shoes in Second Life were terrible, and since he had made his own shoes for his avatar, I thought he was talented and could make me some as well.

Out of love he labored over a beautiful pair of goth high heels just for me, with rings and spikes, he spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make them, and how to do the scripts in them so that they would work perfectly... many other shoes in the game looked horrible, they didn't fit right, legs would pop through the tops of boots or the toes would come out the tips of the shoes, and he wanted mine to be just perfect, and he put all the time into figuring out the right way to do this... it took him days to get it just right... but when he was finished... I couldn't go anywhere without being noticed for my shoes! People would tell me they loved my shoes, where did I get them, and can I have a pair! I got it so much that I had an idea....

"Sweetheart..." I said to him... "Everyone loves these shoes... why don't we sell them?"

He said to me "But those are your shoes, I made those just for you..."

"Yes, I know... " I said to him... "But, I think you have a talent that needs to be shared, and you make wonderful shoes, and the avatars in this game do not have wonderful shoes to wear... we could open a shoppe, and we could sell the shoes you make, and we can save up the money we make from these shoes to meet in real life one day..."

The store was born, and it was called "Hearts Desire" as it was my desire for this shoppe.. and the shoes sold like mad, we got so many compliments from all of our customers, and so many of them wanted to know more about us, and our love story... and so we told our love story to whoever would listen,.. and customers would start bringing in their friends to purchase shoes so that they could help us to meet, and more and more people started to come in... and then the famous avatars in the game started to come in and they all started to talk about our wonderful shoes....

And Joe designed amazing styles... styles from his imagination, and dreams.. and every time a new style hit the floor, we'd get swept up in crowds of customers with more and more compliments, and we became very well known in the game...

Joe always had me in the spotlight... Heart Wishbringer... he hid in the background, I greeted the customers, and helped them chose colors, and styles, I helped them learn how to wear the shoes, and I told them our story... I posted advertisements in the forums, and I was the model for all the shoes... I was in the spotlight... "Heart... the owner of Hearts Desire...."

Who was Joe? Well... Joe was the artist, the creator of the shoes, but the customers didn't know that.. they always assumed it was me... "I love your shoes Heart!" they would say... and I would always tell Joe, that I felt bad that they thought it was me, that designed them all.. But he didn't want to be in the spotlight... he wanted to be left alone, to his designs.. he didn't want to deal with all of the instant messages, and all the fans, he wanted to have peace and quite to build, and I understood that.

It's hard to build when you are distracted... so we had our store open for a year and it was the most popular shoe store on Second Life for that year it was open... but the more time that passed, the more sad we got in real life... my real life situation was really bad, and he was very lonely... he wanted me in his real life and he honestly didn't think we'd ever meet in person...

The seeds of doubt were there...from the beginning... how could it ever be possible, even with money from Second Life.. for us to be together in real life...?
Joe wanted to be held, to be loved, to be touched, to have a real life with someone, not a game love affair...

I wanted the same, but I had more hope.. I knew inside my heart we'd meet and it would all work out, I just couldn't prove it to him.... as much as I wanted to prove it, I couldn't.... and because I was living with Dan and unable to leave, because I had no car, and no job, and no friends of family near me ( they all lived 4,000 miles away ) I felt trapped in a situation that wasn't easy to get out of...

We closed our store on Second Life... as we just couldn't take it anymore.. we were both feeling depressed and sad over the fact that we spent all our time online there and the popularity of the store made Second Life more of a job than a game, it wasn't fun anymore... we were spending 99 % of our time working, customer returns, and customer service, we never had time to cuddle or hang out like before and it honestly became a full time job. We were not getting the attention from one another that we used to get and we were getting tired of the hundreds of emails a month just relating to our store, customers wanted different colors in their shoes, they wanted sparkles in their shoes, they wanted exchanges and they wanted special deals, just like real life, customers needed us... we tried to leave Second Life and put a sign up saying "We are on vacation for a while away from Second Life" but customers emails kept coming in and we couldn't just leave them hanging, so instead we just closed the shoppe... With no store in Second Life... there would be no customers, and with no customers, we could spend all our time together one on one again... and talk and plan what to do next.

We stayed away for 8 months... our shoes that were still floating around in the game which we sold for 500 L$ ( Linden Dollars ) when we were in the game, were now selling at auction for upwards of 20,000 L$ a pair. They became collectibles and if you had on a pair of real "Hearts Desire" shoes, you would be hassled to give them up or sell them to whoever loved them and collected them.. even the owners and creators of Second Life ... the avatars called the "Lindens" were being hassled to sell the only pair of Hearts Desire boots they had on their feet, we started to get massive amounts of emails from people begging us to come back... telling us we were being called an urban legend... that new players wanted our boots and shoes and were hassling old players for them, and that old players were getting offers of thousands of Lindens just to give them up...

We didn't realize we were that famous in the game... but apparently we were.

Joe and I spent a lot of that 8 months out of Second Life crying... I got very depressed, because I wanted to be with him, and I was already depressed because I was unhappy in my relationship with Dan... I never realized I was depressed, but when I met Joe in Second Life I was staying awake for 3 days straight, not sleeping and then sleeping 12 hours on the 4th day and repeating.. it was so bad I was sleeping only 2 days a week. My real life relationship was hard for me, because when I met Dan I fell in love for the first time in my life, and I was 30 years old. Prior to that I had been married for 12 years to my best friend, and the father of my children.. I wasn't in love with him, and I never thought I'd ever find love... I married him because he made me laugh and we were good friends. When I met Dan, it was the first time I felt love... but Dan had been in two marriages before and both women left him.. he wasn't prepared to give his heart to anyone new... so although he liked the companionship and loved feeling the love from me, he wasn't ready to give me his heart, and although I knew this from the beginning, I stayed with him hoping he'd change and give me his heart, unfortunately he didn't ever open up to me... and I spent all the years with him sad, crying and wondering what I did wrong to deserve this.... why couldn't he just open up and love me the way I needed him to? It was the hardest relationship for me,.. because I really need to feel needed and loved.. and he wasn't able to give me that.

But Joe... he filled the gaps, he made me feel loved.. and in the beginning he tried to help me with my relationship with Dan.. he tried to help me through it, and help me understand Dan better.. in the beginning Joe's love for me was so uplifting and wonderful... I never met a man who loved me so much and just wanted to see me happy.. even if it meant it would not be with him... until I met Joe...

He really loved me... and I knew it.

We never thought we would meet... not with the way our lives were.. he had an autistic son to care for, and he couldn't work.. I was trapped in a situation where I was very poor, and Dan had the only car and he took it to work, I had no friends or family to help me, I knew no one in the tiny village I lived in, because I hardly left the house, I had three daughters to think about.. and I needed Dan to help me keep a roof over their heads...

Joe and I have struggled with our real lives getting in the way of us being together... until I finally left Dan to move home to my parents house... I was afraid to move home at first for fear that my parents would think I was nuts to be in love with a man from the internet. I thought since my mother never approved of my husband, and she didn't approve of Dan... that she would definitely not approve of a man in Wales who I met in a game on the internet. My biggest fear of moving home would be that I would end up losing contact with Joe... and that I would lose him all together.

That fear was dispelled when I introduced my mother to him for the first time. She liked him, she actually did.. and I didn't have to worry anymore.... from the first week that I arrived back home in California... I knew that Joe and I would meet... Joe knew it too, he got so excited, he began to tell everyone around his town all about me, until this time he didn't want to tell people about me for fear of being ridiculed...

Then itv found us... and they wanted to do a documentary about us.... They wanted to help us meet.

Joe and I have had a very hard 2 1/2 year relationship. We have been so addicted to being with each other on the internet that we both put on two stones in weight. We hardly ever left the computers, and we realized it was very unhealthy.. but our love was something we both needed so desperately in our lives that it was all we had to keep us motivated and happy. When we were apart we were miserable... we just wanted to be together so much that we didn't care if we gained weight... we'd rather be together at the computer than not together...

We tried to keep up dieting, and exercise but it was very hard on us.... we often found that we were rushing back home from outings in town just to be together... at our ages, we never thought we'd have the opportunity for finding our one true love.. we never thought we'd find someone who we would want to spend the rest of our lives with... he always thought he'd die a lonely old man in his chair.. and I always thought I'd spend the rest of my life wishing for someone to love me... and finding that I was always empty inside.

Until we met... and it has been over 2 1/2 yrs since I told him I'd never leave his side... and my promise still holds true... and when we met at Heathrow airport for the first time there was nothing but pure love between us... all the love I had for him, all the caring, all the emotions... they were not just online feelings, they were really real life feelings... I knew it and he knew it...the only thing that has kept us apart is the fact that we are poor... if we had any kind of wealth the moment we met online, we would have had no problem with the distance between us... nothing would have kept us apart...

All we want is to be together,... just like in Second Life, we motivate and encourage each other, and bring out the best in one another... if we were together in real life, we would no doubt be successful, motivating each other and encouraging each other... since meeting, we've changed each other's outlooks on the future... we no longer see ourselves as alone... we are together... even though there are miles and miles and an ocean between us... we are working towards the goal of being together... it's a slow process for us, because we do not have the funds to put things in order faster...

We both realize it's going to be a lot of work... but if we have waited 2 1/2 years just to finally meet.. and kiss... we are willing to wait a little longer to be married and live together... at least we know now that it is just as real in person as it was on Second Life...

Now that I am back home in California, we still stay connected via Skype voice chat and webcams, we still check in to Second Life but we don't go in there and build anything new... we can't rely on the income from Second Life to be enough to help us get together, so we are working on our real lives, planning college courses and planning on getting Jobs...

I already had an interview yesterday... and was told I was a good fit for the position, I am hoping that this position will be the beginning of something wonderful, and I am looking forward to saving money to be with Joe.. ( Paul ) and since that is really all we need to be together is an income, so that we can hire a lawyer to help us with the Fiance Visa paperwork, and money in the bank to be approved.. I am hoping that this job will offer me the luxury of being able to be in his arms for the rest of my life...

Joe and I don't care about money,... we are not materialistic.. but had we known that money was going to be the one thing that would keep us from being able to be with our true loves, then we would have been materialistic. Sometimes I wish I had been... if I had been, I wouldn't have had to wait 2 1/2 yrs for that first kiss.

I'm just glad we finally had the opportunity... and I can't wait until we are together so that we can share our lives together and so that our love can continue to produce magic in our lives and in those around us.

When we are together... anything will be possible.. we will have the love and encouragement we both need to be happy and successful in anything.

I can't wait.. honestly... I look forward to the day we have a home together.. I may not have been materialistic before, but I sure am going to be now, because I want things now in my life... I want him... and to have him I need to have money, a bank account filled with it, and a home for us to live in.

My children think I am the best mom in the whole world... I've always given them love, and everything they wanted, and always put myself last... They've lived in some very beautiful places around the United States, but they've never seen me happy... not completely happy... but they see me happy with Joe... and they love him and his son, and when we are all together... we will all be happy.