dear [the Name of this letter's sole adressee],

just so you know? i am about a million pounds grateful for you. i've been meaning to mention it to you for a few days, and i have, a few times, but in specific senses. i'm serious, though: thanks for being friends.

thanks for the stuff i learn from you, like how to solve a rubik's cube, and how to use leverage to not get attacked, and how the way a person sets their hands or angles their body tells you about how they're reacting to the situation; thanks for the stuff you've been willing to learn from me, like why poetry isn't dusty and musty but lively and vivid, and bloody prescriptivists are bloody and prescriptivistic.

thanks for doing stupid stuff with me, from getting frighteningly lost to writing a bloody novel in a single month to trying to figure out what in hell kindness and honesty are, to hiding paper cranes in nooks and crannies to remind people not to forget to be awesome. that kind of stuff isn't hardly worth doing alone-- it's exponentially more fun and more interesting to do with someone else. 

thanks for listening to every single new development in my constantly upheavaled relationship with christianity and the nature of human thought and action, but much more than that, thanks for helping me figure it out. for questions. for additions. it occurs to me that outside of books and my family, you are probably the greatest influence on what and how i think and what i will believe in the present and future. 

i enjoy you and the things we do and the jokes we tell and the books we read and the ways we think, and i'm grateful for you.

and of course, i'm afraid of you, too, in that little way that we're all afraid of one another.

but that's fine. 

thanks for yourself and the bits you've lent to me and the bits of me you've rearranged. (is that a good model for interactions? i still don't know.)

sincerely, 

claire