Dear Best Friend (Ouranose),
I owe you a love letter – not even just because it’s on the prize list we were keeping for Nanowrimo. You are a good friend and very much a part of our little family. Since I don’t know how to write a proper “love” letter – I’m just going to say a lot of nice things because I think that’s pretty close to what I want to do here.
I LOVE THAT…
You are always willing to try new things, even if it scares you. I know that you probably do not feel that you’ve been doing this super well but listen – since I’ve known you, you’ve done a bunch of big deal things that you wouldn’t have done when I first met (interviewed) you. Note, these things are not in chronological order, it’s just a list of things as I remember them.
You moved to [that one city] to help a friend even though you knew you weren’t ready and even though the plans for that move fell completely through. It wasn’t at all what you first described, but even knowing that, you did it anyway.
You joined a fanfiction writing competition at my request even though you weren’t super confident in your writing. In addition to that, you’d never written that much or that often before and it was going to be difficult with your work hours. You still did it and you stuck with it for a couple of months! You grew so much as a writer, I couldn’t believe it!
You did Coursera writing classes with me and shared your work with me even though you weren’t even sure if you liked writing or art more. You had no idea whether you were good enough or how you were going to stack up to my writing. I know it scared you but you came and you tried week after week for MONTHS! Four long months, actually. (We still technically have one class and a “cornerstone” project to do to finish that venture, but it’s not a big deal – we just did NANOWRIMO… Speaking of…)
You participated in Nanowrimo 2018 after I asked if you would be interested! I had asked in 2017 but I don’t think you were ready at the time and so you declined, saying that “maybe next year” would work for you. For weeks you were nervous about it, questioning which project you wanted to do (Sci-fi or Fantasy) and doubted daily throughout November whether you had enough content or a decent enough story to even make it to 50,000 words – but here you are! You wrote **more** than 50K and are still adding to your word count. I know you’re disappointed that you didn’t finish your novel but you WON your first year. You know that you can do it. This is is your turning point – there’s no falling down after this.
You challenged yourself on your own to start a writing blog and write every single day for a month. It was a brand new story every day for the month of October 2018. AND YOU DID IT! That means you did two months back-to-back of writing every single day. That’s wild, do you realize? You wrote SO MUCH – and you got better day after day, week after week, and MONTH AFTER MONTH. I’m so beyond proud of you. More than anyone, you deserve this break for December.
You applied for the job you have now even though the doubts you had about it were longer than the reasons you needed the job. Still, you applied, and you followed through, and now you’re thinking of different ways to do this job well. Excitement is bubbling beneath the surface, more so than your worry, and it’s beautiful to see you that way.
You scheduled that friend date that one time and you were going to go with that person for sure. You were ready and panicked, but ready. Yes, it was a relief when it got canceled, but that doesn’t change that you were committed. Sometimes, just being willing to take a risk and go outside of your comfort zone is amazing. You’re such a brave person.
I LOVE THAT…
You are growing into your sense of self. Over the last couple of years, you’ve started to recognize unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy relationships. You’re starting to make changes in your life so that you can succeed and sticking by the things you know to be true in you. Writing is a part of the life you want to live, mental stability and strong friendships are things that you want to enjoy, and this means making hard decisions. You’ve been making hard decisions for a long time and the stress of that is finally starting to pay off.
I LOVE THAT…
You fit so perfectly into our little family. It’s hard to find friends in people who don’t have children, and most of my other friendships with folks who didn’t have kids came to a halt. They don’t understand the prioritization of a parent and so there ends up being this inexplicable breakdown between these other people and me, leaving me stuck with parent friends that I can’t always relate to. But you not only treat my son like another friend and as an equal, but he’s come to love you as an older sister. I never have to worry that my being a mom is a burden to our friendship because it’s almost an important dynamic of our friendship. My husband loves you, my son loves you, and I love you too.
I LOVE THAT…
We have so much in common??? I didn’t even think I could have a friend that is so good to me and also so much like me. We’re both cynical in our own ways, but we’re also both really good people with good intentions. Our super powers are that we want to help others to the greatest capacity we can afford, but we also have big dreams that sometimes collide with those goals. From innocent anime to LGBTQ+ books to crafts, we share almost every interest. I cannot believe that I’ve gone so long without having such a good friend.
I LOVE THAT…
We keep each other on track. Whenever you’re struggling, I step into my mommy-friend shoes, but you’re just as quick to do the same to me. We’re good at different things in these roles, but it complimentary to our personalities. I am what you need, and you are what I need when it comes to emotional support (and everything else, tbh). It is just another layer of that awesome, healthy friendship that we have going here.
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…
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I love you ❤
I could probably go on for days and days about what a wonderful friendship we have, and how much you mean to me, but this is supposed to be a letter. Letters shouldn’t be the length of books, so I’m going to end the post here. I hope you have realized how truly loved and appreciated you are as a person, if not no one else, at least to me.
I can’t wait to start working on our joint project together and change the world with our words (and our teamwork effort art too).
Yours always,
—ab
Hozzászólások