Thanks.

I don’t normally write straight-up personal stuff on the Internet. I usually write personal stuff masked as a story, or an essay, or (gag), a listicle. But right now, I really feel compelled to break my pattern in order to express my deep gratitude for the people in my life who have been there for me, recently and always.

Something that I’ve learned during this particular rough patch is that unconditional love comes in all shapes and sizes. Like Mick Jagger says, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” And when what I wanted didn’t work out, I had so many humans near and far who stepped in to give me what I needed. I could just say an all-encompassing “thanks, guys,” to make this a quick and easy read, but I think these people deserve to be named and acknowledged, specifically and wholly, for their selfless contributions to my life.

Rachel, first and foremost. Thank you for letting me cry on your couch and watch Law & Order SVU for weeks until we could both robotically exclaim at the end of every episode, “EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DICK WOLF.” You let me sleep in your bed when I wasn’t really sleeping, and you ordered grilled cheese sandwiches for me when I wasn’t really eating.  You invited me out when I didn’t feel like going, walked me to work when I didn’t want to leave the apartment, and downloaded Tinder on my cell phone so that we could make fun of the guys who propositioned us for “sex & Seinfeld.” You got me a half-birthday card when I missed my grandparents and hung out with me when I was all woozy-weird from my migraine medicine. You stepped in as Florence Nightengale and as Detective Benson and most importantly, as my best friend. Eating nachos with you every night for two weeks probably saved my life.

Lindsey.  Thank you for sending pizza and coffee to my apartment when I didn’t want to get out of bed. You sat with me outside of my apartment and inside the bar below my apartment and told me your stories. They helped. You wiggled your shoulders and told me every single day that I was the best, best, best, even though I certainly didn’t feel like it. You let me order buffalo chicken nachos and picked around the chicken even though you’re a vegetarian. You bought jeans that one day so that you could sleep over at my apartment when I didn’t want to sleep alone. You got a wet napkin and mopped beer off that guy’s dog at the park, which wasn’t really a thing you did for me, specifically, but it just goes to show how incredibly kind you are to everyone around you.

Kati. Thank you for making me a collage of all my favorite foxes/Fawkes-es, and for making a list of questions that every new person who enters my life has to answer correctly before they’re allowed to love me. You’ve been rooting for me since I was a kid, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. You talked to me for four hours when I was sobbing on 8^th avenue alone, and reminded me that I have mystere. I had somehow forgotten, but that’s why you’re the best; you constantly remind me that I’m cooler than I think I am. I’m always kidding when I say that I hope I get famous, but you never are. You’ve told me since I was six years old that someday, everyone is going to see me the way that you do. I hope you know that I could always just have you, and that would be so much more than enough.

Jackie. Thank you for texting me 500 times until five in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. You always know just what to say. Probably because you’ve been dealing with the inside of my brain and my heart since 2^nd grade. You’ve dropped everything to be there on every single one of the best and worst days of my life. You were the first person I told when my parents got a divorce, when my grandfather died, when my heart got broken five million hundred times. You were there when my mom announced her engagement to Alan, when we brought Pooches Leia home for the first time, when I finally got boobs and had to buy bras at Limited Too. It means just as much that you’ve let me help you navigate the good and bad stuff in your life, too. I love your heart and your spirit and your never-ending desire to watch Ewan McGregor movies and talk about hobo sandwiches from summer camp.

Jessica. Thank you for driving all the way to Brooklyn just to eat pizza with me. I don’t know how we do it, but we come up with a new, gut-splitting inside joke every time we’re together. Reading the titles of all those landscape portraits at three in the morning with a Sean Connery accent was exactly the right proscription to get the healing process started. You and Tyler told me to go on a date with my writing, to fall in love with my writing, and to fuck the shit out of my writing, which made me giggle and feel a thousand times better. You checked up on me the entire drive home, and never let me forget for a minute how awesome a duo Rabbit & Rocketship can be.  You reminded me how good we both are at surviving. I wouldn’t have survived any of it without you.

The James. Thank you for calling me every single night on your drive home from work, even if I was busy and you knew it. The fact that I saw your name pop up on the screen, without fail, night after night, meant more than I can tell you. You sent me that IMDB page for the movie we watched in the hotel room at Disneyworld when we were kids—I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember the title for YEARS, and you did it.You reminded me that I’m more fun when I’m not attached to anyone or anything. You reminded me that I’m happier when I’m free. You bought a plane ticket to come see me the minute that I told you I was sad, and have been counting down the days with me ever since. I can’t wait to see you—nobody can set me up for jokes like you can.

John. Thank you for helping me process everything. You sat with me outside for two hours and let me show you all of my favorite songs. You flew all the way out to New York from Austin just to do yoga in Strawberry Fields with me and those two super friendly dudes for an hour, and kept your zen even when I got lost on the way over and showed up ten minutes late. You’re great for bouncing ideas off of, and instigating movement in the heart for change. I don’t need to tell you that you’re the best listener in the world, because everyone does, but you are.

Eric. Thank you for inviting me to The Pizza Underground show. You have no idea how badly I needed to get out of my apartment. Their incredibly “cheesy” performance reminded me that I have a hundred million pizza-and-music soulmates out there in the world. You bought me beer and waited in line with me for an hour just to get donuts. You shared your new friends and your new home and your new city with me. Everyone I met said, “We heard so many good things about you,” or introduced me to other people as, “basically Eric’s best friend.” I have no idea how you come up with cool things to tell your friends about me, but it made my heart melt. I could watch movies and say snarky things to the screen with you for hours. You always have the right amount of tequila.

Hannah. Thank you for sitting at the bar with me for two hours and letting me talk about myself nonstop. I think I asked a total of two questions about YOU, which must have been incredibly rude and annoying, but you were incredibly gracious and funny and amazing, as usual. You showed up for me even though I’ve been MIA for like, six months, which isn’t something that many people would do. As my first real best friend in New York, you never, ever fail to show me the best time in the world.

Taryn. Thank you for texting me and offering to eat Cinnabon ice cream and drink wine with me.  The snacks are on me as soon as you’re home from one of your many adventures out of town. I can’t wait to re-instate Whitney & Taryn weekends where we marathon hang out at the park and eat brunch and buy infinitely cool matching tank tops.

Dan. Thank you for being my Snack Spirit Guide. Even from halfway across the planet, everything you say makes me snort-laugh whatever I’m eating out my nose. Your List of Fun Things To Do (like watch Almost Famous and read The Princess Bride and eat Cool Ranch Doritos and look forward to watching the chronological edit of Back to the Future) saved me when I didn’t want to move from Rachel’s couch. I would have absolutely cried if I wasn’t laughing so hard picturing you at a Balinese silent-disco.

And to the innumerable amount of friends that I didn’t list by name because I’m approaching 4 pages and that’s just too much to read on the Internet, THANK YOU. Thank you for listening to me whine and telling me jokes and sending me music to listen to. Thank you for being encouraging and reminding me to focus on my work and making pizza topping recommendations based on my moods.

I know everybody says this, but I feel as though I truly have the best friends in the world. I have people in my life that are willing to commute across the country to visit me when I’m not feeling worth visiting. I have people in my life who tell me how great I am when I’m feeling like the biggest fucking loser on the planet. I have people in my life who love me just as much when I refuse to get out of my sweatpants, or eat anything other than whiskey, as they do when I’m functioning normally. And I have no idea why any of you people do it, but I am so very lucky that you do. I can’t repay any of you for the kindness and unconditional love that you’ve shown me. I can really only hope that you know that you all have made the largest possible contributions to the universe just by being the people you are.

There were a lot of times in the past few weeks when I wanted very, very badly to explode into sub-atomic particles and move to a different state and throw away my phone and my computer and live with the bears on the Pacific Crest Trail or in Alaska or somewhere that no one could find me. There were a lot of times where I wanted to rip out my stomach to keep it from hurting, where I wanted to hibernate in my shitty apartment and call the HR department at work and tell them I died. There were a lot of times when I wanted to just listen to Elliott Smith on a loop and try to find a way out of my sadness with more sadness, where I wanted to be somebody, anybody else for just five minutes so that I wouldn’t feel like this.

There were a lot of times when I wanted to just fucking fall apart.

And none of you let me.

WildThing.

This time, I say, I will let you go. Like the very last pages in my favorite childhood book, the one

with all the monsters. Wild Things, they’re called. You called me that once, too.  I will gnash my terrible teeth and roar my terrible roar and roll my terrible eyes, and you will get in your boat and wave goodbye.

That’s okay. I’ve got the whole world inside my body. My belly is the mountains that line the coast in California. My legs are the sections of I-35 freeway that try to run away to Austin or Dallas, but always stop in Waco to breathe. My hands are still wrapped around that mugger’s skinny elbow on the subway in Barcelona. I was so proud of myself that day. My lungs are the windowsill on the bar below my apartment where I suck down free cigarettes with a bouncer named Lenny. My lips are wrapped around endless ice cream cones in freezing London, sometimes kissing strangers in twin-sized beds.

The things I like best about myself are that I have my grandmother’s smile and I always survive.

I wish I could tell you that the girl ripping holes like mouse bites in the front of your t-shirt isn’t me. That the girl running hard on the burning asphalt under the summer moon isn’t me either. That the girl who makes sounds like a goose with broken vocal cords isn’t crying hard enough to illicit such a noise. That those scratch marks on your wrist when I wouldn’t let you go weren’t made accidentally by my manicure.

At least Bruce Banner had the sense to hide away where no one could find him. At least Bukowski kept himself locked in a post office for years. At least Carrie Fischer subjected her memories to ECT.

What do I have?

I have a shiny, fleeting thing, like Daisy Buchanan right before she hits Myrtle with her car. Like Holly Golightly after she applies a fresh coat of lipstick and before she throws Cat out of the taxi. Like Clementine Kruczynski with her Blue Ruin hair before she drinks all that whiskey.

I need to leave you because you don’t know how to stay.

At least, not with a girl like me, anyway.