Halo has been in my life for 8 years. A friend of mine put the controller in my hands when I was 11. I can’t say that I’ll ever forget the laughs and Flood nightmares that I used to have with all of my friends. Most of my friends have “grown” out of Halo, but I don’t think that’s possible, or quite understand it. To say that this game has had some influences on my life would be an understatement. I quoted Cortana a lot back then, gestures and tone included. Someone called me Cortana and my response was “forever” and I came up with my crazy and dorky screen-name.

When I was 13 I discovered bungie.net and the forum community. Me and my 13 year old immaturity jumped right into it. I made some friends, was in a lot of groups, feel stupid for a lot of the stuff that I said now, but I was young and dumb, that’s expected right? I was stupid and got my then 4 year old brother to start playing with me. My parents didn’t like this and took it away, I wound up suffering as well.

But that didn’t stop me. I would get on HBO everyday (or pretty dang closeto it) to see what was going on in the world that I was missing. This was around the time that Halo 3 was coming out so it was driving me especially crazy, but I got to play every once in awhile with friends from school. To kill my time while I wasn’t studying, I discovered windows movie maker. And then I discovered the cutscene library. I wound up making a lot of silly videos, half of which I’m smacking myself in the forehead for now, and would post them on HBO.

Then finally, this past June when I graduated from high school I got a 360 and Halo 3, my parents didn’t object, not like they could, and started playing again. Got on Live finally and was happy for the summer.

While patiently waiting to go to basic, I turned into an HBO regular, playing with a lot of people and partaking in several discussions. I became friends with several forum-goers to the point of Facebook, Skype and now Twitter. I wound up getting advice and well wishes from fellow HBO-rs before going to basic and I wound up using some of that advice once I was down there. A couple of people wrote on my Facebook wall and my Mom sent me the posts in the same letter as several pictures of Cortana.

I guess what I’m trying to say through all of this is….I’ve grown up with Halo. From a silly small town girl to Airman, it’s been there. The community has been there. Even though I was childish and immature and dare I say stupid at times, it’s always been there.
I can’t thank anyone in the Halo world enough.
Don’t disappear on me.

xoxo,

-CortanaVII (Cortana4ever)