Literally obsessed.

A love letter to my friends

Today is the winter solstice, the darkest day and longest night of the year. Tomorrow, one small moment at a time, our days start to get longer. The light sticks around a bit longer—one little glimmer at a time.

In anticipation of that slowly and steadily growing light, I wanted to share something I wrote reflecting on friendship a few days ago—sort of in response to and inspired this 2021 tweet by EJ Chong making the rounds recently. I know this is a bit different than what I typically post.

All that to say, I love y’all. Thank you for being here.

Tell me all the things that bring you joy. What makes you laugh and what renders you speechless. Perhaps you’re even the type who marvels with your mouth hanging open. Perhaps I’ll text you slyly, “Michael, we are not a codfish.” And you will fight to hide a grin. At the same time, perhaps we lament the dearth of codfish emoji.

Let’s be real, we will probably find ourselves in more than one season of lament.

I will sit beside you, then, offering my tears like snowflakes—tiny, unique markers of this moment. I will tell you, amid the weeping, that more than a decade ago, a photographer used an unbelievably fancy microscope to capture the structure of dried human tears. She found herself in a season of her own lament and transformation. “I had a surplus of raw material,” she said in an interview.

I will tell you that I remember the onion tears most closely resembled snowflakes. That I remember wondering how to be a good steward of my tears—of my grief.

So tell me. Tell me what grieves you. Tell me when the disquiet settles deep in your bones. Tell me when the news destroys a small part of you.

And tell me what brings you hope, even so.

Tell me, too, when your kid takes over your Spotify Wrapped with one song from Muppet Babies. When you can’t possibly sing Baby Shark one more time. Call me and laugh and complain that you spent all day searching for one episode of Blaze and the Monster Machines only to find out it didn’t really exist.

And tell me about you. Describe even the most mundane details of how you trained so hard for that race. Every mile, every pebble in your shoe, every root you dodged. Tell me about the date you went on—with your husband, with your boyfriend, with the friend who is ambiguously connected to you but you aren’t sure about changing the dynamic, with the guy you met on that one app. Tell me if his hands were sweaty or if he was a good kisser. Tell me if you want to see him again, and why.

Post the selfie with your new lipstick, old earrings, the haircut you're unsure of. Send it to me with the truth, with more than “felt cute might delete later” in your words. Tell me that the haircut is only new because the old pants didn’t fit because your body grew a baby and you never bounced back.

I will remind you that bouncing back is bullshit. I will offer you a list of all the marvelous things your body has done, the babies you’ve grown, the wildly fascinating and bizarre way your organs relocated temporarily to give that sweet child ample space.

I will ask you what keeps you from demonstrating tenderness toward yourself, the same tenderness with which you so beautifully regard your child.

I will tell you I’m so proud of you, and I will mean it.

Please, please never stop sharing with me about the side hustle, the gig, the little dream that's actually a big dream. I will celebrate your first sale, your first publication, your first client, the first time a product sells out or a course fills up.

I will celebrate the first sentence your child reads on her own. The first time he sleeps through the night. The first time you have your own office at work.

I will sit in the heaviness of unexpected loss. We will make plans for the future, even so.

I will go with you to get your first tattoo (and your second), to that movie no one else wanted to see, to roam the aisles at an art supply store and imagine what we could create.

Tell me all of it. Seriously.

I’m literally obsessed with my friends.