At 13, I was intolerably self-centred, spiteful and satiric. I think I’ve written once before, that I believed that I was not made for the world but it for me. As I grew up, I started to fall in love with everything beautifully unreachable. My dreams and ambitions soared higher than it should have been. What I wanted to achieve existed in a world more akin to coffee and cigarette smoke barely dancing in the air. In retrospect, I think I was just so afraid of the process of wasting away – becoming part of the faceless mass meandering aimlessly in a sea of moving madmen and dry earth that dividing my time living in the present and in my head seemed to be the best solution.
Things got awful for a while; I believed that darkness wielded the capacity to protect me from my demons and my unkind selves, even though I knew that the distortions and the nausea could only have been stopped by pulling the trigger on the mind where the phantasms originated. You were the break I needed. It didn’t start of well, I’ll be honest but you were like the beach; your persistence like the waves that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s sent away; your words were the gentle caress of the wind and your presence like the sun rising from behind the horizon, bringing light and peace to the world I wasn’t extremely fond of.
In Perth, back in 2014, every step into the evening light made me anxious. I would close my eyes and it seemed almost like I could not discern between nightmare and reality. It wasn’t because I hated it there but it was because darkness beckoned me and that pull was always much stronger than I. When you walked with me that one evening, around the block when my calmness was starting to fleet, I felt safe; I felt at peace, I felt strong. You walked, and the ground burned to golden concrete. I only had to walk near or behind you, and I was safe. The present then was the gift I had always wanted and I wish I could have kept that moment forever.
In class, in times when I felt like the sunlight and air was menacing and the chatter around was giving me the type of headache that doubled my vision; when everything danced on their own accord, en pointe naturally and offhandedly; when my breath would burst into a sprint, the smoke of that moment calmed me.
Because of you, I am learning to speak with more kindness, with more conviction, with more fire. Although, I must admit, that first one still troubles me. The way the words splash against my teeth is sometimes foreign. The words, they sometimes form but sometimes don’t reach my mouth. It is a language I am still learning to speak.
You were always good at reading me; you could read the pain and panic I was in by my smile; my playfulness by my waving arms *small bunny*; the anger and frustration by the steel in my voice. I think it was because I noticed you reading me once that I began studying the people around me too. Through that, I think, I became a better leader, friend and person. So, the good that I do and have done and will do can be traced back to you in that way.
I am beyond lucky to have studied under your guidance. I admire how you can build palaces and cathedrals out of paragraphs. In times when tears were the only tickets for the trail towards peace, your words were the needles of silver light that were strong enough to pierce through the suffocating shroud of darkness.
So, thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to fight off the darkest of nights. Thank you for teaching me to use my words to raise the people around me. Thank you for teaching me of tenacity and ferocity. Thank you for being the support that I always needed but not always admitted. Thank you for being the steady heartbeat of so many things I have had the joy of being a part of. Thank you for letters and gifts and smiles and laughs and energy. Thank you for being created out of the radiance of the sun. Thank you for being amazing. Thank you for being you.
The testimonial you wrote for me, I am grateful. You painted me incredible. I’m not sure if you know but it has set the path of which I will follow to continue to grow and learn. Through it, I read of your hopes for me and you can be assured I will be damned if I don’t do my absolute best to achieve those hopes.
The next few years for me will be stressful and exhausting and frustrating, I’m sure, but I will still make time to tell you about anything or anyone interesting. Then you can laugh when I tell you my plans for the following few days.
I will always be ready at your service when you call. You can be sure of that.
I hope I have done you proud.