There are so many things I would tell you, were you right beside me snacking on a bowl of cereal at ten pm.

I would tell you how exhausting and utterly creatively deprived working forty hours can be.  The waking up, the commuting, the ten hour shift, followed by a quick dinner, and repeat for four more days.  I believe this whole system is bonkers and we have all lost our minds.  Money is, after all, a made up thing.  It means something only because we say it does.  But there is food and heat and comfort here and so we sell our lives to a job because it is easy.  Because it is comfortable.  I would tell you I see the insanity in these days, in these minutes that are racing by.  I see them but cannot change things for now.

I would tell you, immediately afterward, that while I say I cannot change this situation I am lying to you.  Any of us, at any given moment, can change every single thing about the current trajectory of our lives.  I believe now--as I did so many years ago--that our dreams are only a moment away.  An insane moment of bravery from existing.

So perhaps the startling truth is I am just lazy.  Or ready to be mindlessly numb for a bit.  Ready to pay off some loans.  To have some real paychecks.  To feel grown up for the first moment since we graduated so many years ago.  To wear my big kid panties (they are, still, endlessly childish).

I would tell you that I want my own children, despite my rantings and ravings about how selfish the decision is.  I would even soulfully admit that, if possible, I would like more than two.  I would like them all to be close in age so that at times my home is nearly erupting with insanity.  I want things, my time here, to be as wild and out of control as possible.  I want a home spewing with love and family and busyness and devotion to one another and the world. I want these things even though I would have denied it just a few years ago.

I want, most of all, to still believe in ideals and the beauty of human beings as I continue to walk on this planet.  I want to see a sunrise and the mountains in the west and find myself utterly breathless at the sheer beauty of the gift of being alive.  I don't want a single moment to lose its shimmer because I still ardently believe my child eyes were the most honest.  The least tired.  The least jaded.  And I hope I can always recognize just how much it matters to believe in something.  Anything, really.  So long as the belief is deeply rooted, pervasive, and eruptive into the fabric of every detail of one's life.

And of course, my dear friend, I would end in telling you how much I adore you.  How much I love you.  How much I miss our gallivanting but recognize its passing as I must the passing of so many other beautiful moments in life.  That time is complete and we served one another so well.  Continue to do so (as evidenced by these words).  But it is not our time to be together any longer.  You have gone and I have gone and all we have between us now is the change our meeting catalyzed.

I love you so dearly.  I hope you recall in each bowl of cereal and microbrew, each practical joke entailing the use of new car smell, and every book nailed to the wall of an apartment (has there ever been more than one?) that there is beauty in every action.  In every moment.