Happy Birthday to one of my oldest friends. I have struggled this morning with what to write about you, to you. How to describe how amazing you are, and what you mean.
In the end, I think you say it best yourself. You wrote, months ago:
The Lightening was plentiful, cracking, splitting the difference between clouds and space, an arched finger, white-blue and broken.
Life is not what you expect it to be. You do not anticipate your own responsibility to the world, to your world, to your path. You do not expect the skies to frighten you, but you are scared just the same. You do not expect people to leave. You do not expect the bad patches, the years it sometimes takes to climb out, to get home, to find yourself, again and again. There are no safe distances from which to watch.
You cannot watch your life.
I feel myself changing. Too little to notice at once, a small layer of skin, shedding each day, as though nothing is happening, as though I will always be the same.
Even when nothing is happening, something is happening.
Something is happening. You are onto something. There's dark and then there's morning. It's morning. It is your year, your story. Seize it. Happy Birthday! I am so grateful for you, so happy you are in this world, and I miss you.