Thank you!!!
I got to thinking, that if I ever have anything published, I want to thank each and every person who’s ever touched my life in any way at all.
Of course, that would take a LOT of paper, I probably wouldn’t get to print it all, and it’s better not to wait to say thank you, anyway.
This is a list of thank you’s, to the very important, and the not-so-important people that have made my world what it is.
First of all, thank you to my family. I wouldn’t be here without you (as you already know cos…biology, duh). Thanks for teaching me so much about everything- whether it was by an example of what to do, or what not to do. Thank you for all the gifts you’ve given me, monetarily and through your guidance. Thanks for making the 80’s last through nearly 2 decades, thank you for being there with (real and emotional) sunscreen and Band-Aids in my years as an albino and a crybaby. Thank you for listening to my stories, theories, and explanations, for looking at my pictures, picking me up when I fell over, and not grounding me. I remember much more joy, happiness, and exploration than time-out corners, which is a blessing of gigantic proportions.
Thank you, to friends. From preschool to McDonalds to camping trips to playgrounds to classrooms to extracurricular programs to online to downtown or anywhere else, we’ve had an amazing run. Thanks for talking to me, making me realize the diversity in people, for being amazing and horrible, and full of life. Thanks for making me cry in both good and bad ways, thanks for your teachings and presents and for giving me something to listen to, no matter how stupid. I don’t care if I still know you, still remember your name, still talk to you, or even specifically remember you; we once shared some time together and that may have impacted me in a huge way without even realizing it.
Thank you to best friends. You’re the ones that weren’t afraid to talk to me, to share with me, to have me depend on you, or to depend on me. You’re the ones who would go there, who have shared with me some of the most amazing, crazy, terrible, paralyzing, enlightening, beautiful, most human moments. Whether I feel at the end of my rope, the top of my game, or somewhere in between, you’re always there with something to offer. Thank you for sticking it out with me through personality changes, crises, crazy moments, shifts in ego, and absurd circumstances. You completely overwhelm me, and I could never want anything else. Thank you for never charging me a thing, no matter how much you’ve given to me. You collectively amaze me to no end, there’s just no describing it.
Thank you to authors. I’ve been addicted to reading for…forever. Since I could understand your words, and even when they were just sounds or shapes on a page, you’ve been influencing me. Having the voices of so many people, living and dead, of all backgrounds, personalities, and lifestyles has given more to me than I can ever hope to total. You gave me intelligence and a way to learn as much as I could about things that might never have been available to me otherwise. You have created writing that became my lighthouse in a storm, my rock when the world is jell-o, and a way to connect to life when people, places, and events are the very last thing I want to consider. You eased- and sometimes jolted- me into the complexities of this world and everything it contains. You lent me your wisdom, your creations, your thoughts, and your ideas. As a whole, you have made life and feelings more communicable. You have created whole worlds and made them pocketsize. You have taken a simple musing and made it larger than life. You are behind everything, and you can be in millions of places at once. Thank you for being true magicians.
Thank you to musicians. You make feelings something we can sense with our ears, you open us up and allow us to spill and burn every ounce of fuel we contain, and then you make our bodies and minds produce more. Music is life. It is made by people, for people, about people and the effects thereof on everything and everyone. I feel that everyone is connected, and there are few things that bring us to realize that so seamlessly as music does. Thank you for your blood, sweat, pain, and tears. Thank you for changing the world. Thank you for being an anchor when the current is going faster than the speed of coping, thank you for insight, for opening me up to my potential, for being mood- and mind-altering, for helping me connect to people, for being my flashlight, my security blanket, my favorite stuffed animal.
Thank you to My Chemical Romance. You’re an absolutely amazing group of people, and you have impacted my life in such a huge way that I’m not sure I can really define what I’m thanking you for. I’ll try, though. Thank you for getting on that stage for the first time. Thank you for being the first (and only, so far) band that recorded an album where I could listen to it and actually feel who the people behind it were. Thank you for cussing us out, thank you for hugs and kisses, thank you for making us scream like there’s no tomorrow and burn cities to the ground. Thank you for teaching me about life and death, thank you for helping me cope and being there when I finally found a solution. Thank you for putting into words and images those things I could never find a way to say. Thank you for mosh pits, for switchblades, for all the friends I have found and/or kept because of you. Thank you for saving thousands of people all over the world and uniting us under one banner. Thank you for changing the world. Thank you for staying human and humble. Thank you for not living the rock star lifestyle once you discovered that it was destroying you. Thank you for creativity and confidence, and an ability to open up that I never thought I’d have. Thank you for being my role models, my brothers, parents, friends, and teachers, my light in the dark, my hot cocoa in a blizzard. Thank you for being both my security and the thing that pushes me past my comfort zone. Thank you for helping me discover myself. Thank you for toughing it all out. Thank you for showing us both your superhero side and your secret identity. I hope we can share that plate of brownies some day.
Thank you to everyone on dA who has given me some of their time. Thank you, to those who have shared their creations with the world, thank you to everyone who has ever commented or favorited my works. You have no idea how much the slightest positive reaction has helped me. I’ve gone from being completely under the radar to having 135 comments and 24 favorites on 48 deviations. That is positively amazing to me. People actually LIKE my art?!?!?!? Wow. WOW. You’re incredible!
Thank you to teachers. Everyone I have already mentioned, everyone I’ve ever met, every educator that has ever taught me something, everyone I’ve ever seen, is included in this category. Whether you’ve provided examples or imparted wisdom, you were there, and you made some impact. You’ve taught me about rules, how to break them, the consequences of breaking them, and the loopholes that exist with them. You’ve accepted and rejected me millions of times, you’ve made and broken me. You’ve been there, you’ve been gone, but you have existed around me from the time I was conceived to the time that I’ll die and we’re stuck with each other. We might as well be grateful of that. Thank you for being part of this world and not causing a natural or not-so-natural disaster that left me alone with the cockroaches and a computer with Microsoft Word. I couldn’t have Thanksgiving without you.
Thank you to the world for being here for me to store all my stuff on; to the CIA and aliens for watching us; to the maintenance workers who keep stuff clean; to the inventors of soap and other hygiene products; to the doctors, dentists, and brain-understanders (good psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, etc.) that keep us healthy; to entertainment providers; to Lamar Burton, Bob Ross, and KCTS9 (and all those other weird people and channels) that have made life full of rainbows and happy little trees; to pets for putting up with humans and wild animals for occasionally eating some of the other ones; to Sci-Fi for making us paranoid about everything, but really good at theorizing; to technology and art supplies that allow us to make stuff; to the British for being the root of more problems than any other nation - you’re still jolly good chaps, anyway!- and my other ancestors, who probably all fought each other at some point; to everything and everyone because without you, there wouldn’t be stuff.
Thank you, and good mornight!