love in a box. (or, why internet sisters are a real and true and good thing.)

i like to chronicle good things.

even when my heart has sprouted wings and is fluttering a good few inches just out of my reach, so that i spend the whole day glorious-giddy and unsure whether or not i want to snag it back from the lovely perch it's found, cradled by air and good news and something far lighter and brighter than sunshine.

the truth is, right now, it is very hard to remember the good things. the good people. the moments when the reason you cannot sleep is because you opened a box of love and magic and unexpected care and not because your stomach is twisted with knots and news headlines form a dark halo around your thoughts and it will be morning soon but you cannot rest, you cannot quiet, you cannot let yourself loosen.

i was in disbelief from the moment i first opened this.

and, always, it is very hard to acknowledge that people see good in you, that people like you and think about you when you hardly expect them to - that people you admire, very far away, will write a solid, beautifully inked letter about how highly they think of you (even that they know who you are!).

one letter, among so many other, unexpected, unthought of, letters. deep in a box of love and magic and well wishes.

i do not know, still, after a night of happy tears and individual thanks and unending gratitude, what to say. i know that the (dubiously big) sister of my heart, nicole brinkley, is worth more than anything i could parse out, anything that i have told her with shaking fingers and blurry eyes. what she has wrought here, for my sake - i cannot ever pay her back for it. she gathered together faith and determination and expended it all for me, over several months.

there are good people. and there are nicoles. would we all be like her.

i know who will get tight, bone-rattling hugs the next time our paths cross, who i will not be able to speak to properly until i've found some manner of repaying this kindness, some manner of saying how wonderfully, how deeply this touched me and how much it meant to me.

the truth is, right now, it is very hard to remember there are good things. i've scrambled over the hard floorboards of my bedroom five times this morning, to touch this box and marvel at its existence, at the fact that night has receded and washed forward once more and it is still here, a concrete presence filled to the brim and not at all a dream.

nope. still here.

thank you.

thank you from the bottom of my heart.

thank you for letting me chronicle something good, something hopeful, something that fills my heart and my eyes up every time i think about it. thank you for giving me something to anchor me when i feel low, when my words feel empty or useless or deflated.

you are what is good in the world. and i am glad to know you, and i am glad to love you, and i am glad to know that you know me and you see the good in me and you love me.

i will never, ever forget this.