We’ve been through so much together.
Or maybe we haven’t.
Neither of us is the person we were when we met, and that’s amazing. We have helped each other grow into the people we are today—better informed, better protected, more understanding. We have held each other up when we could have fallen down. We have endured hardships and challenges that have reshaped who each of us is, and who we are.
This world is a crushingly lonely place. This world hates and fears almost everything I have ever been and it reminds me of that antipathy every chance it gets. I spent two decades and change in a continuous nightmare of no smidgen of comprehension and closeness ever seeming close to enough, of never, ever knowing that the people who showed me kindness or friendship or love were sharing that warmth with me and not with whatever idea of me they’d managed to piece together. They would tell me, you are not alone, and I dreamed of someday believing them.
That nightmare is a distant joke now, something I can call forth when I need it for writing and then set aside when I’m finished.