I feel alive.

Thank you for sticking around with me and encouraging me and supporting me. These have been very difficult years for all of us, some more than others, some less. But I'm so, so grateful for the love and the kindness that I've been shown. I've made some fantastic friends in this fandom, and as someone who's never had a community of his own, you have no idea what your friendship and your kindness means to me.

I've struggled through chronic pain, trauma, cPTSD and reliving memories long blocked; I wound back up in a wheelchair and lost total mobility, and have had to grasp with a DID diagnosis and how to work with the alters within; I dropped back into a deep hole of despair and fear and scared myself and others. But throughout all of this, I've had friends and those to whom I could reach out and with whom I could chat even about the most inane things possible. You sat with me and spoke gentleness to me without trying to fix my problems, and though I felt like storms raged inside, you encouraged me and expressed your faith in me. These past four months were especially trying as I tried to relearn what being myself means, especially as I try to come to grips with DID and body dysphoria. When a close friend of mine passed away, I mourned in silence. When my grandfather passed away soon after, I cried out. And when you answered with comfort and love, I was overwhelmed.

Because of you, I feel motivated again. I'm writing more and more each day. I'm studying languages again. I've taken up yoga and stretching in the morning, and I have since left the wheelchair and walker behind again. I walked five miles the other day as we made our way around the state fair. I was out of commission for the rest of the week, but I did it. I can do it again. You have no idea how stoked I feel about that.

Don't ever feel like your efforts are in vain, or that a simple kind word is wasted and unheard. You have no idea the lives you touch by simply being you. Becoming jaded and bitter is so easy to do nowadays. I get it; I've been there. I'll likely be there again before my time's up. But you are forces of good, and are bastions of greatness. You can be the mercy and the kindness that someone needs, even as you have been that for me in my darker times. Please don't ever give up on others. Please don't ever give up on yourselves. You are amazing. You are creatures made of stars and built of energies unknown. Never forget your greatness.

I have a few things to upload. Things I wrote, gifts I received, etc. Nothing as grandiose or stuff as the stuff written above. I just wanted to say thank you. To all of you. Be excellent to one another. I love you all.