Dansday
Today is her birthday. And I have mixed feelings about it.
I never really talked to her. I mean, not in the real sense. Only online. The kind of connection where you see someone exist, you follow what they do, you respect how they carry themselves, and you just never say much. Maybe a like here and there. Maybe nothing at all. Just quietly watching from a distance.
And somehow that still means something. That is the weird part.
I do not know how to explain it cleanly. She is someone I genuinely respect. Not in a complicated way, not in a way that needs to be anything more than what it is. Just pure, straightforward respect for who she is and how she moves through the world. The kind of person you look at and think, yeah, she has figured something out that most people have not.
So today, when I realized it is her birthday, I felt something. Not loudly. Not in a way that needed to be announced or acted on. Just quietly, somewhere in the background of my day, I thought about it.
I hope she is having a good time. I hope everything around her today is soft and kind and easy. I hope the people closest to her show up the way she deserves. I hope she gets to feel, even for just one day, exactly how much she is appreciated by the people who actually know her.
And me, I will stay where I have always been. Respectful. Quiet. Rooting for her from wherever this is.
That is enough. It really is.