This post is a little… okay a lot, more emo than I usually get.  I’m great at expressing anger, and sarcasm is my default setting, but I’m not very good at expressing the gentler side of the emotional spectrum, which means that sometimes there are important things that get left unsaid.  I’ve decided I’m going to try not to do that quite so much anymore, and a day set aside for giving thanks seemed like an appropriate time to start.

In the past couple of months, I’ve had two rather extreme reminders of why people shouldn’t take their friends for granted.  The first, which in the end turned out to be a huge misunderstanding, gave me a kind of Scrooged preview into what it would have been like if this friend was no longer in my life.  Short version: my life would be a much emptier place without her.  The second was much more serious, because the second friend, my best friend for the last 17 years, came very close to dying.  She’s on the mend now, and should be fine, but this was a really big wake-up call for me, and not just for the obvious reason.  Over the years we’ve gone through times where we don’t see each other for a while – sometimes months, and sometimes even longer – but the next time we’d get together it would always be like no time had passed at all, and I’ve always believed that she would always be there, that we would one day be old and grey and still getting together like no time had passed, because that’s the way we’ve always been.  I can’t even imagine my life without her in it, but there are no guarantees, and I’m going to do my best to never forget that.

On a happier note, I’ve been getting to know a new friend recently whose opinions and beliefs about many things, including writing – you had to know it was going to come around to that eventually – are, in his words, "scarily close" to mine.  Not that I want all my friends to think and act the same as I do – that would be pretty damn boring – but it is nice to have one friend who just seems to get it .  Somehow it makes the world seem not quite so big.

I’m not going to name names – I’d feel awful if I accidentally left someone out – but to all my friends, I just want to say thank you.  I’m richer for knowing you, and even if I don’t always say it, please know that it’s always true.