It's not exactly that I was uninspired to write this, but rather that I could not fathom how I would condense so many thoughts and moments into written words across a computer screen.
And yet, now, the moment seems to have come. I told myself a while ago that I would write him a text, write something that would be immortalised on the internet and that would be a bit like a friendly hug and smile, or a wink from across a computer screen.
Him and his Shakespeare, who he dislikes tremendously yet somehow manages to tolerate enough to throw little snippets of Elizabethan English at me, making me smile and occasionally melt into a puddle of literary enthusiasm.
He was the one who bullied me into installing MSN and going through the hassle of setting up an account, and I've only ever regretted that decision when it's been late, late at night, and I desperately need to work yet find myself distracted by a friendly conversation. Even then, the conversations we've had have always been worth it. Through a computer screen, we talked about all sorts of things. He revealed his thoughts on cruelty, his view of himself, just as I poured myself out to him. Perhaps screen contact like this is better... it allowed us to say things we probably wouldn't have otherwise, with body language coming in and being awkward and so on.
The twenty-three hundred facets of me, the little ripples in the essence of myself, he knows his way through most of them, more than pretty much anyone else, and probably more than he realises himself. He knows about my love-hate relationship with sharp objects, about some of the things that I have kept most intricately hidden, he talks about girls with me as if I were a guy too, and he distracts me from myself when I most need it. If anything though, he has grown more attuned to my tics, to the signs of me preparing to flip out, to the non-verbal cues that I constantly try to withhold.
I've come to realise that I redefine myself constantly, and it's mainly through him that I figured it out. Trying to gauge my feelings, reading from the short, abrupt responses that all was not well, he was sometimes like a barometer for my emotions, and often, he could notice what I would not let myself accept just yet. My tone got shorter, sometimes ruder, and he could tell that this was not a Good Day, and that things were starting to go badly again. Even when I was sleep-deprived, fighting my way through two or three nights with less than three hours of sleep, he put up with me, helping me calm the fuck down, breathe, and remember what I needed to finish. He understood what a lot of people don't, that being crazy is just one of my many dysfunctional ways of coping, because sometimes I do things just to feel alive.
The stress of the last two years, and the increasing vice of pressure and anxiety that I clamped around myself made me a bit crazy. The solace of an amusing or intellectual conversation was of inestimable worth, and kept me going. Without him, I might not have made it through, and my demons might have devoured me entirely, or I might be on meds. He was nearly like medication, a few times - lightened me up when I was depressed and self-hating, and calmed me down when I'm was flipping out.
He is a realist, sometimes a pessimist, sarcastic and intelligent, funny and immeasurably kind. He is incredibly exothermic, in every sense of the word, gives lovely hugs and smells amazing. I would trust him with my life, and to a certain extent, I suppose I already have.
He has read or will read this text, because I'll find a way to get the link to him. I only hope my words have sufficed to try and explain how much I appreciate his friendship, and how much he has helped me.
When I hugged him goodbye today, I tried to put all my emotion into that short moment. That's why I walked out of the house so fast - the tears were starting to well up. Overly emotional, I guess.
...Fuck, I hate goodbyes.