A few things Labyrinth successfuly got me through:

      My burgeoning sexuality

      My times of trial

      My current career

My burgeoning sexuality

      If you have read my essay concerning the numbers 6 and 13, you have seen the impact Labyrinth had on my life when I was a teenager. David Bowie utterly captivated me in his portrayal of Jareth, the Goblin King. In my case, he single-handedly induced puberty. More seriously, he seduced me to the Dark Side...er...um...well, he got me hooked on evil. Up until age 13, I had believed in all that goody-goody stuff such as good will always conquer evil. Well, dammit, I wanted Sarah to stay with Jareth at the end of the movie and if she wasn't going to, well, then I would. I though she was nuts to pass up an offer like that!
      Although Jareth isn't a vampire, he certainly has the same sexual allure. I had been utterly, completely terrified of vampires as a young child and this followed me into my early teens. It was beyond my comprehension that anyone would find vampires appealing and especially, sexy. Then in 1986 I observed Jareth's power. Phoar! Now I got it! I could finally understand why women were swooning when Frank Langella portrayed a sexy and sympathetic Dracula ten years earlier. It just all clicked into place. It was then that a new syndrome was diagnosed, although the trend would not be confirmed until another case arose a few years later. (Please see medical notes on "The Jafar Syndrome".) I'm apparently not the only listean with this syndrome; Anakerie has a similiar condition.
      Although other lovers and obsessions come and go, Jareth has remained the standard against which all other villains are measured.

My times of trial

      I first stumbled across the Internet at college in 1995. At this time there was nothing on Labyrinth and I never really though too much about the Internet at that time. In February 1997, I had been rejected for a scholarship to Germany, and to combat my depression, I was cruising through the Internet looking for anything on Labyrinth that might have been created. It was in October 1996 that Amethyst began the first Labyrinth mailing list, and shortly after, I believe Monica, Abbagirl, and Walter put up their pages and were listed in Yahoo. I stumbled across their pages and a few others in February and was excited that so many other people loved Labyrinth as much as I do.
      I couldn't believe how much fun the list was. I felt like I had found an entire community of friends, and I have still stayed close to quite a few people. Their love and encouragement is as warm and genuine as any of the friendships I have had in person. I never would have guess that this would be possible.
      More incredibly, the mailing list reunited me with a friend from high school whom I had lost contact with. There had been a young woman from Carnegie Mellon University who had joined the list a week after I did. I greeted her and mentioned that I knew someone who had attended CMU but had needed to drop out a year or two before. She told me a few of the people who she knew from my town, and I found out she worked at CMU with my long-lost friend! I got to see my dear friend again and he introduced me to Laura. She's the only person I've met from the list, but I hope to change that and meet more Listeans in the future!
      More recently (this past week, in fact - Oct. 15, 1998), my mother was unexpectedly admitted to the hospital. She had several blockages in her heart and was immediately scheduled for quintuple by-pass surgery. The day after her initial diagnosis was made, she was being prepped for the next day's surgery. My brother and I visited her the night before her surgery. I was still in a bit of denial, so the full danger wasn't immediately sinking in. This turned out not to be too much of a "trial" because I was immedately put at easy by an interesting coincidence/message from       insert diety of choice       .
      My mother had the television's sound the entire way down, by the relatively intellectual game show Jeopardy was playing. I was standing under the TV but my brother looked up and remarked that there was some kind of question about Labyrinth. (To be technical, Jeopardy provides contestants with the answer and they provide the question, but let's ignore that point for now!) Naturally, I freaked - that's just w a y too damn cool. I asked him what the answer was, but all he had time to read was something like "In Labyrinth the goblin...." If anyone has seen this show, I will love you for all time if you can tell me what the rest of the answer was.
      To further reinforce this coincidence/miracle was the fact that one of the contestants was named Walter! (Please see one of the best Labyrinth pages Think Labyrinth! created and maintained by that sweetie and award-winning flirt Walter Pullen, the Maze King.) Just two incredible coincidences that I can't write off! Also, as I write this three days later, my mother is recovering wonderfully. Thank you God/Goddess/Jim Henson/       insert diety of choice       .

My current career

      I am currently employed at Gateway Publishing. Gateway produces 15 local weekly newspapers, and I publish them online at www.ghplus.com. I would not have this job if it weren't for Labyrinth.
      A short time after I had joined the Labyrinth mailing list, I thought that I would like to share my magazine articles with the list members because it seemed that no one else had anything like them. If I were to create a web page, I wanted to provide original material. I felt that I had enough to do a decent sized page. This lead me to create Through dangers untold... in March and April 1997. I had no idea it would be such a success! I was delighted and excited that so many people enjoy the site.
      In those early days :) there weren't many programs that created web pages the easy way with the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) method. I taught myself HTML and did everything the long and painful way from scratch. This later proved to be fortunate.
      I was doing recreational pages for over a year when I began having more and more difficulty with a job that wasn't really in my field of experience or interest. I had toyed with the idea of becoming involved in web design, but potential employers were interested in candidates with a lot more technical expertise than I could offer. It didn't really look like I would have a career in web site development and design. No one was very interested in someone who could just do pages; they wanted techies to handle the hardware and entire company networks. Yeah, whatever.
      I was kind of by accident that my brother's girlfriend found an ad in one of Gateway's papers for someone who was fluent in HTML. Cool! That's me! I was petrified that their pages would use frames, but, thankfully, the webmaster at Gateway hates frames as much as the rest of the industrialized world does. I was in! It was exactly the kind of job I wanted. It also has remarkable flexibility, for which I am doubly thankful. I'll also be able to work around my mother's recovery without much inconvenience or difficulty.

      So, in summary: Labyrinth has not only entertained me over the years, it has introduced me to some incredibly wonderful people, encouraged me to write both fiction (forthcoming fanfic) and non-fiction (my essays), helped me through my depressed times, given me comfort in troubled times, and provided me with the opportunity to work in a field where I can display my talents and get paid well for it!

      From the bottom of my heart, I thank you Jim Henson, et al. and Amethyst and the entire Labyrinth Mailing Lists.