An open letter to 56 people I know

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1

Whenever I talk about how much I love you, tears come to my eyes, which is extremely embarrassing because this is my favorite conversation topic, and I’m completely astounded that you both exist and want to spend your days with me, of all people, and that I get to see a side of you nobody else does.

2

More than anyone I know, I want you to see your innate goodness, which is so completely obvious from the outside, but apparently concealed to you by habitual mental distortion.

3

Your sustaining love was so crucial when my life was falling apart: you held me when I was incoherent with rage, fed me drinks and snacks, drove me to the psych ward, all with a smile, and it’s incredible that I can still count on you, that you continue to be so reliably caring like it’s not a big deal.

4

It’s so funny that you say I’m a hero of yours, because you’re definitely one of mine, and there is an immense inimitable force to you—a combination of passion and intellect—that fills me with admiration, and I owe a considerable fraction of my strength and boldness to your influence.

5

You were repeatedly socially incompetent towards me in a shocking and completely novel fashion—in a way, I’m glad you exist rather than some more mundanely annoying person.

6

When you spontaneously emailed me to tell me that I was corny and terrible, it was so liberating, because I’d always feared that someone from my past would do that, and when it happened, it wasn’t so hard to take.

7

Although you have behaved extremely well in my presence, there is something about your sweetness I don’t trust, a whiff of condescension in it that suggests it’s actually a form of transmuted aggression—show me your dark side!

8

I find it unfair that you turn out to be funny and socially adept on top of everything.

9

I admire so much that despite your insane life circumstances, you remain chill and humble and curious, many of the wealthy and powerful people I’ve met are just fucking weird in a way that you’re not even a little bit.

10

You completely broke my model of what it’s possible for a person to do—it’s one thing to read accounts of the powers of mystics, it’s another to have one directly operate on your consciousness.

11

Though you have been incredibly generous towards me, and I’ve loved spending time together, I feel I’ve never been able to be totally natural in your presence, because I am convinced that you can see exactly what is annoying and silly about me, that your perceptions are probably dead-on, and that you will not tell me about them.

12

My life will be incorrect if we don’t spend another dusk walking in London together as soon as possible; I both like and love you all out of proportion to the amount of time we’ve spent in direct contact.

13

I have never been wrestled in an official capacity at a conference before, and this is emblematic of your whole deal—people adore you because you are seemingly constantly getting away with life, while we all heavily strive.

14

Though you have been incredibly generous towards me, I feel a little bit intimidated by you, because your clarity of thought is so riveting, and my mind feels slovenly and chaotic in comparison, like something I am sullying you with.

15

You’re so insanely psychologically healthy, palpably good, and impressively accomplished that it adds a layer of intrigue, because surely you must have some insecurities or doubts, you must be a little malformed like the rest of us, and I’m so curious about what the malformation is.

16

You emit so much intelligence in such an unrestrained way that I need to take a break after hanging out with you, it’s like my brain needs to reshelve some microplastics to make way for the new stuff you want me to upload.

17

You’re cool and seem smart, but I don’t know what the fuck you do with your time, I don’t even think you go to orgies like the others—so what do you get up to?

18

Everyone’s take on you is that you’ll do incredible things or burn the fuck out, so probably both will happen, and I hope it’s gentle.

19

Everyone’s take on you is that you’re brilliant and will hopefully get out of your own way someday soon, and nothing I’ve seen so far contradicts this.

20

Perhaps I need one unhinged weekend with you, a sparky person who endlessly entertains, before I definitely realize I’m too old for such things.

21

You are an absolute creep, probably the only person alive I actively dislike.

22

I’m scheming all sorts of ways to import you because I really feel there’s lifetime friend potential here, I am not being falsely effusive!

23

Our relationship taught me what it’s like to destroy something beautiful for absolutely no reason, and there is a bleak majesty to that, a sense of arriving alone voluntarily at the bottom of a dry well gazing up—I only want to experience this once.

24

My repeated failure to make my half of our friendship work is one of my notable life missteps and unclear whether completely reversible, although I’d like to try long-term—noting that I’m not worried about your welfare ultimately, because I’m sure your life is filled with abundant genuine warmth, it’s what you naturally bring out in everyone.

25

We have a shared perspective that makes for a really easy friendship, a context that’s hard to describe exactly—it’s something like an impatient love for existence, a desire to inhabit and inhale every chunk of this world as it is.

26

I was the exact right shape to bring out the worst of you, and I hope you learned something airing it out.

27

You taught me that awakened people can also act like incompetent dickheads, which is really valuable to know.

28

You are completely lovely and experienced the worst of me in a concentrated dose, and it’s totally fine if you dislike me forever.

29

Maybe one day I’ll understand why I fucked up literally everything we worked on together, to an extent that’s not true of anyone else—generally I am an extremely diligent collaborator!

30

I am so grateful that you helped me feel normal for a second after I felt like I’d permanently departed the ranks of functional human beings—after my most desperate years, discovering that I could have an uneventful nice little relationship was like discovering that I was Superman.

31

I am grateful for your incandescence, when you occupy a space I feel it almost physically brighten, and I hope you find the life circumstances that deserve your presence.

32

I am grateful for your strange mind which so uniquely filters existence—at first it was difficult for me to interact with because I felt pressure to match your cool poetic manner, but I’ve subsequently realized that nobody could, so my job is simply to appreciate you, and this has been an upgrade to our dynamic.

33

You are such a fun combination of 50-year-old Zen monk and 18-year-old debate club kid.

34

You are such a fun combination of broodingly poetic and acerbically perceptive, and it makes your presence addictive.

35

You are such a fun combination of particular genius and California silliness, and the little project we did is central to my conception of what LA is—that warm night I sat in your studio staring at your paintings and trying to fit your unusual mind into my own.

36

Please snap out of it, we all just want you to snap out of it.

37

Despite the complexity of our history, my dominant assessment of you is simple: I consider you the most talented writer I’ve ever met, it’s dumb that you don’t have five books out, and I wish I could figure out how to be effectively pushy with you in the service of increasing your output.

38

I didn’t get you at first, but it’s now clear that your sarcastic wit and your performative riffing is a buffer for a really generous and gentle soul, and I think you’ll make a spectacular father.

39

I am quite happy that things turned out so well for you, it’s a real, sustaining source of everyday joy for me to think about—I am authoritative on the subject of how it could’ve gone otherwise, and how much nobody would have blamed you for underperforming, given the circumstances.

40

You helped me realize one layer of my stupidity, because I initially thought you were a douchebag purely based on a few cultural signifiers, and then you turned out to be kinder and smarter and more diligent than me.

41

I keep returning to this moment when you absolutely ripped apart a piece of writing I brought you, though our friendship has expanded since, because that meeting was so emblematic of how you are glimmeringly kind yet unrelentingly sharp to a combined degree I’ve never witnessed in another person.

42

There is a weird operation I want to perform on our friendship, where we double-click on the exact opposite side of us than the one that typically comes up in our interactions—somehow, it’s the stuff I’m least interested in that always arises.

43

When I was a teenager I thought you were the coolest person in the world, and now I realize that adults who entrance teenagers are generally pretty limited.

44

My past hatred of you was based somewhat in envy, and now that I regard you as essentially predictable, my hatred of you has faded as well—eventually, I understood that a certain kind of loner outcast is simply isolating themselves from competition to protect their fragile underbelly.

45

My irritation about your apparent deficits is obviously based somewhat in envy of your extraordinary and legitimate gifts, and I think this is fine, although if you want, you could consider letting someone else take over your social media.

46

It’s psychologically helpful for me to have a certain disrespect for loafers, those who feel no pressure to share their virtues, and you have served me in this role, though I quite like you also.

47

My basic frame on you is that I’ll never know you well, which is easier to stomach than the alternative, that there isn’t much to know anymore, that life has completely hollowed out the baroque inner life you once enjoyed.

48

More than anyone I know, I want you to see your innate worth, which is so completely obvious from the outside, but apparently concealed to you by habitual mental distortion.

49

I really wish we could share a 6-hour train ride through Slovakia and just talk to each other about whatever, because you’re quite obviously brilliant and hysterical—the social bullshit that became lumped up between us seems totally optional, but hard to reverse now that it’s there.

50

I’d enjoy spectating if you’d stop trying to be a super-positive guru: it’s so fake, whatever is actually going on with you must be so much more interesting than that!

51

Your ongoing commitment to the skeleton meme makes me so happy.

52

You are one of the most talented people I’ve ever met, and the second you decide to really work consistently, your life will take off and never stop—but it is completely legitimate to not want what is involved in this.

53

I can’t figure out how to shake the odd competitive dynamic that distorts our friendship; although it’s nothing serious, I feel like you’re more comfortable when commenting on my drawbacks or asserting your intelligence, and surely I am setting this up somehow or doing something similar without realizing it—and this stops us from achieving a level of sustained honesty, which could be really rewarding if we ever get there, let’s try again in two years.

54

It’s so funny to me now that you were my first love, and I was very dramatic about it at the time, but I never really knew you.

55

The world would crumble completely absent the quiet, unshowy, unselfish, sustained kindness of people like you.

56

Can we get lunch?