September 20th, 2012
shoutouts to the unshouters
“And what you need / is what you get / Don’t believe in fear / Don’t believe in faith / Don’t believe in anything / that you can’t break”
—Garbage, aka a Sept/Oct classssssssssic
“20 Diana points for that!”
—Diana, 9/19/12
“WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE AT MINNESOTA: / 1. Gotta love Big 10 basketball! / 2. Proximity to your family: far enough, but not TOO far / 3. Proximity to your cousin, Christie: 1.5 hours / 4. Proximity to your other cousins Mike and Matt: 20 minutes (oh wait; maybe not a good thing to list when trying to convince you to come here)”
—Christie, 1/31/00, via email (it goes on, pretty epic)
“#HMFASO to OSU doing #JumpAround at their game this weekend. #WTF?”
—@UWshoutouts, that UW hatred/arrogance just knows no bounds!
the original shoutouts, courtesy cousins Chloe/Matt via Twitter
well geez.
So I’ve been giving a lot of credit to the people who have somehow been able to carry me through these past couple of years or so (duh). But not getting enough credit are the people who have been quietly supportive in their own overwhelmingly valuable way(s).
This is actually much more rare than one might think.
(This so far is just one person, to my knowledge.)
People who are good to you will meet you where you are. Whether that’s sharing advice over multiple cups of soup – but with an 8:55pm cutoff time so you can work hard at challenging your insomnia…or being willing to watch from afar and not take being sidelined due to heartbreak personally. And maybe be willing to try it all again with me later.
So here is a shoutout those folks. A hearty, grateful, wholly-happily-surprised shoutout: for being supported and understood; for not being shut out due to my own shortcomings; for being forgiven.
All of this growing, it’s painful. I can sometimes feel it as it happens, and it hurts. But I take comfort in knowing at least I am growing.
important side note: as Rachel noted on Twitter, yesterday, on the 19th, she was to be 19 in 19 days. That happened to me at 29. NICE WORK RACH.