skirmish of wit

With OTH ending and next Wednesday being Naley’s swan song, I know that many of us are a basket case filled with unhealthy emotions.

Here’s a program to help us overcome this addiction and make us healthy for new ships in the future.

Step 1: We admit that we’re powerless over Naley - our lives have become filled with squealing, self-inflicted violence threats, and looking at animated GIFs.

Step 2: We have come to believe that a power greater than Naley could restore us to sanity (a new TV show?)

Step 3: We have made the decision to turn the care of our lives over to that higher power - rocky road and mint chocolate chip ice cream. 

Step 4: Have admitted to our family, friends, and fellow fans the nature of our Naley addiction wrongs - “I promise to stop staring at GIFs for hours and not texting you back” or “yes, you can now call me on Wednesdays between 8 and 9 and I’ll pick up”

Step 5: We start to list all of the time we spend on shipping Naley - may make us want to move on? Probably not.

Step 6: We’re ready to remove these these insane “naley-specific”  personal character defects from our lives - well, maybe a little.

Step 7: Ask new TV shows to have an EPIC couple so that we can transfer our energies - where else can I use my new GIF making skills?

Step 8: Make a list of all the friends we have forced Naley on or ignored due to our need to ship

Step 9: Make direct amends with these people by buying them the s1-9 OTH box set so that they understand.. and maybe buy them some mint chocolate chip and rocky road ice cream.

Step 10: Continue to make a personal inventory of all our naley weakness moments and promptly admit it.

Step 11: Finding another TV show to give us the power to carry out our new non-naley obsessive lifestyle

Step 12: Having had the spiritual awakening as the results of these steps, we try to carry out the message to fellow naley shippers.

As I was looking through my room this weekend, I stumbled upon a letter I received from Bethany Joy Galeotti last April. My life has been lacking inspiration lately as I’ve been in a bit of a dark place (think a less exaggerated version of Haley in season 7), so when I saw this note again, it reminded me of how working with fellow Joy fans to achieve something so important - raising awareness for human trafficking - was probably some of the greatest months of my life.

Now, I have never met Bethany Joy in person, so I can’t say what she’s like face to face, but when I read reports of a person who was “cold and distant”, I thought that there was nothing further from the truth - at least from my experience.

I started a #WeAreAllHuman Twitter campaign last year to raise awareness for child sex trafficking and to generate donations for Love 146. It was a simple fan initiative in honour of a woman who inspired us all with not only her portrayal of Haley James Scott but also the real person we saw glimpses of from her blog, interviews, and music.

I had fairly low expectations for this campaign. I thought we’d be lucky to raise $100 and I’d double it. But then something happened… Bethany Joy was somehow informed of the little campaign we were trying to do, and she used her voice to make it into something much bigger, encouraging her fans to donate for an exclusive preview of a song from The Notebook. She donated her own money to the campaign. She agreed to write a message for a Christmas card that I designed to send off for donations. AND she signed key chains for auction that we sent through the mail.

And she did it for a fan. I am not part of the media. I have no connections. I am not special. I’m just a normal Canadian girl who had an idea, and Bethany Joy - from her own heart - joined in and completely shocked and inspired me.

This showed her true character to me, and it’s nothing I’d have experienced meeting her for 30 seconds or would have observed at an event.

Cold and distant… my ass. ;)