8. Known
February 14, 2023
Hey Chadderbox,
Happy birthday my friend. You would’ve been 34 today. Still young. I wish you were here.
I can’t sleep, and haven’t been able to consistently for a few weeks now. It’s 4:44 a.m., and I’m not one to gasp at angel numbers, in fact, I usually despise them, but I will admit it feels a little kismet. You wore number 4 in the pool.
I’ve been meaning to sit down and write you for a while now. I know writing you helps me work through things, and to avoid that, I deep cleaned my entire house the other day. Which made it clear how much this is needed right now.
I found an old video of you from 15 years ago that your best friend, Calvin, posted to your Facebook wall. You’re only in it for a few seconds, but you look so happy - looking out the window with a huge smile on your face on what seems to be a road trip to the beach with your best friends. Your name is called and you glance at the camera for a split second, then quickly turn toward your friend as he performs a particularly poignant backseat concert to My Friends Over You by New Found Glory - which makes me think it was the anthem of the trip.
It made me happy to see you smile like that again.
A couple of weeks ago, I met a new friend from California. She’s super friendly, inviting, and easy to talk to. We started talking about where she went to school, and I found out she went to the same school as Calvin. I asked if she knew him and described him from what I remembered. Turns out they knew each other, and I think even went on a date together once. When I heard that, I explained how he was your best friend, and got to talk about how thoughtful you were through your doorstep albums and kindness to me growing up.
It was so nice to talk to someone who knew someone you knew and loved. I feel like that definitely could’ve been weird (it definitely was, let’s be real), but she was kind enough to listen, ask questions, and let me talk about you. I’m grateful for that new friendship - one of many I’ve been able to make over the past few months.
Over the past year, I’ve gone through a lot of highs and lows. But the past few months have made me feel happy and hopeful. I’ve become closer to good friends. They’ve introduced me to genuinely good people. And I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I have in the last four months.
I feel inspired by them often.
The way they love their friends has opened my eyes to what friendship can, and should, be.
Inclusive. Encouraging. Protective in the most freeing ways.
It has shifted my focus from being worried about all the ways the world seems to be ending and how I’ll never afford to live comfortably to realizing all I really need to live happily is the ability to afford a drink or a bite to eat with my friends at the end of the day.
When working toward a house and a yard and a career and a family and a pension (still don’t really know what the hell that is, that’s good) and a [fill in the blank here] feels impossible and overwhelming, I realize I’m living right now by spending the most valuable currency I have - my time - investing in the friendships that help fulfill me. And that’s all I truly wanted all along. ~Cue Animal Collective’s My Girls~
Recognizing my worth has been something I’ve struggled with for a long time, Chadderbox. You know this well. I think I’ve been searching for friendships that make me feel both as cared about and known as you did since the day you left.
That’s a big one I’ve been working on lately - figuring out my values which make up my character and being confident enough to stand by that. To know I am good. To understand that although other people might have different values, it doesn’t make the ones I hold and the way I live ‘bad’ or ‘monstrous.’ It simply makes it different.
I am consistently trying to make choices that support the values I hold - values I had to find after leaving a church which largely defined them for me before. I had to (and forever will) search for what was actually right, or what felt like it. And now I try to live by those hard-earned values. I’m not perfect. But I try my best.
I know who I am, and I know my character. And I think I feel more at home here because I have more friends who know me, now, too. Friends who stand by me. And that gives me peace.
Feeling known feels like being home.
Thank you for being one of my first true friends, Chadderbox. Happy birthday. I love you, I miss you, and I am glad to have known you.
-BreSoftware
