String of Emotion

*This is one of those rare serious blogs.

This is my piece for the "strand/thread/string/whatever of emotion" prompt.

The idea is to make something that symbolizes something that gave you one emotion which eventually turned into another.

I will explain how my piece fits into this.

This may be silly to some, so feel free to stop reading at any time if you cannot handle the absurdity of such an impact. ;)

Emotion 1: Disgust

When I was 10, "One Piece" the anime (Japanese cartoon) aired in America, in English.

This is a series that has been running for over 10 years now and is somewhere around halfway finished.

To dumb it down, the show is about pirates with super powers.

The drawing here is Luffy (loo-fee) the main character.

I saw the commercials and thought it was the STUPIDEST, UGLIEST thing I had ever seen.

Emotion 2: Completed and Utter OBSESSION

One night, flipping through channels, I caught the last 5 minutes of an episode.

It was beautiful.

It was destiny.

I fell in love.

I swore, at least 3 times, to God Himself, that I would someday become a pirate! (Which I shall someday fulfill somehow...)

I drew it, I role-played it, I wrote about it, I bought the action figures, I watched the VHS recordings I had made-- time and time again.

I could spend hours expressing how OBSESSED I was with this beautiful, glorious piece of work.

Emotion 3: Gratitude

Only two people know this, and now I'm extending this bit of information to you:

In 8th grade, I cried every. single. night.

One Piece was my escape. I'd sit in my closet, sobbing and begging God to let me wake up in that world...

One Piece was a bond. I made a project about One Piece in Freshman year, which my now-boyfriend noticed.

He crushed on me for two years because we were two of the rare few that had even heard of the show.

The reason we are together is because of One Piece.

So, to Oda-sensei, the writer (it was originally [and still is] a comic or "manga") I owe so much...

One Piece boggled my mind.

One Piece pulled me out of a horrible piece of my life.

One Piece allowed me to meet my future husband (happy 22 months, by the way, babe!)

So ignore the watermark and enjoy a fan-made music video of the greatest, most-touching anime/manga/movies I have ever been blessed enough to witness. :)