You

You. I wrote this book for you. With all of your accomplishments and all of your flaws, I sat and I wrote. With your chin hairs and nose hairs and toe hairs, I wrote to you. At 3 in the morning on a Sunday or on a bench inside a mall, I sat and I wrote, because words matter. Because experience matters, and connection matters. I wrote this so that even though time moves only forward as far as we can tell, I do not want it to move so far from my memories that they are lost. I do not want them to lose the weight of their significance. I do not want to forget how far I have come, or how many challenges I have endured. I do not want to forget how pained I was or how strong I became.

I wrote because I wanted to reach you, the real you. The deeply flawed, deeply emotional, deeply spiritual human being who was once so lost. I wrote because I wanted to come to a greater understanding of you, to face the fears and traumas and be able to finally accept them all for that they are. The noise they have provided that sometimes seemed so loud it blinded me also somehow managed to allow me to rebuild myself stronger.

You are so important to me, you have provided me with such a deeper meaning of my own purpose and my own drive to find myself. I have so much respect for you, and for all you have taught me. I love you so much, I cannot even express. And I accept you, for everything you are and everything you are not. Because I am you, and you are me. The only thing that divides us is an idea, and possibly someone else’s perception of us. And that someone else is more than likely also lost, so we will help guide them as well. We will not point out their flaws and their mistakes. We will not build walls and hurl insults. We will listen, and we will love, and we will write, and we will fight to understand. Because they are you, and you are me.

So I continue to write for you, because ideas matter. And you matter. And I matter. And we matter. And anti-matter.