State of the Amber Address

[maypirate]

I think it's suitably late enough for me to write something sentimental now. It might seem a little...I dunno, weird that I would post something like this online, but this is as close to a personal website as I'll ever get, and it's good enough for me. Besides, I don't mind who reads this.

Having been 20 for a little over a week now, I've been doing a lot of thinking in between my frantic attempts to do work before I fall asleep again. I think about the places and things and mostly people that have been a part of and defined my life.

So that's you, you who are reading this because you check my journal or because I sent you here.

I don't think I've said enough to let you all know how I feel.

I don't think I thanked you enough for having a murder in my honor. None of you had to cook or write or dress up or play your parts or toast me with secret champagne. A simple "Happy Birthday" would have been enough, but you went above and beyond what I could have imagined. Harlo, that you would even work in my deranged Nam fantasy is both weird and touching and a bit eerie, but it makes me smile. Thank you, all of you, from the bottom of my heart, for doing that for me.
I cannot imagine what Oberlin would be like without any of you.

I am tied so deeply to my home, to Madison, bound with more and stronger threads than I would ever have imagined. And so much of that is because of everyone that I associate with home, everyone who is still there or came from there, my little families of YSP people and my anime friends, and my wives and cat and wife-in-training and husband, even Pairaka-sama, who I met on my dear old Kedem. My oldest friends, my self-adopted sister and brother...all the families that get built over time, and my very closest family, my mom and dad, and the forces like magnets that draw me to both coasts.
Thank you for building a world for me in the best city I could imagine. Thank you for meeting me and changing me and making me who I am.

And Don. Thank you for you. May I never have to remember what it is to live a life without you.


The current time is scary.
My health is sometimes crazy.
But I believe that this is the best of all possible worlds.

One of my favorite authors posed a question in my favorite book, and in short that question was what have you learned from being alive?

I have learned so much in 20 years, but I could never itemize it all. I could never make enough sense of it except to say, perhaps, that the people who you love are the only things worth anything in the world.

So I suppose I'm going to stop making sense soon, and I should get to bed.
I just thought it would be worth mentioning that you all have made my existence richer than I could have dreamed.

"My only sketch of Heaven is a large blue sky, and a larger one than the biggest I have seen in June - and in it are my friends, every one of them." -Emily Dickinson

"What would I do if I had not met you?
Who would I blame my life on?"

As hard as I may try, I don't think I will ever be able to repay you for what you have brought to my life.

But maybe it'll be almost close enough to say that I love you all more than I can express, more than you will ever truly know.

"The happiness that was [and is], the memories that do not fade, are a gift that cannot be lost. You continue to bless my days and years. I will always give thanks for you."

-Amber

Comments

^___^

[kleptoneko.livejournal.com]

'tis what a friend should do ^__^
or a cat.