People with great imaginations make the best friends. 

There is nothing that you can tell me that I don’t know. I’ve imagined every bad thing, so I will always be prepared to forgive. I’ve imagined every good thing, so I’ll always believe in you. I’ve imagined the impossibly grand, so I’ll never let you give up and I will push you past the places you’ve thought were the edges of your known strength.

I’ll always have good stories to tell. I’ll always have new jokes. I’ll always come up with something for us to do. 

Yes, I’m weird. I’m overdramatic. I’m prone to take a small thing and analyze it over and over, but that is what makes all of the positive things I’ve listed prior to this possible. I will dwell in darkness, but that’s only so I can understand it enough to not be afraid of it in this world, in myself, in you. 

If you are my friend, I will always make you smile, make you challenge the world and yourself, make you laugh, give you wisdom, tell you tales. 

But I am largely unlovable because all of this, to the world at large, is desirable only in prose. When you meet me, you’ll see someone who does not fit. That’s why the most that you’ll ever see of me is in these letters on your screen, here on your computer, your phone, your iPad, a book. 

If you do meet me in person, bear in mind I’ve grown up in a world that laughs at me, beats me down, mocks me and has turned on me for being too different. I’m often loved only when there’s no one else available and then discarded once more conventional friends are to be found. 

So I’m shy at first. I’m reserved. It takes a while now, after 30 years of this, for me to be all the positive things I’ve described for someone who wants it. I’ve been too hurt, too betrayed, and am now too used to the world deciding against me.

And that’s why I’m an artist. 

Because I still want to love you. To make you laugh. I want to make you believe in yourself. I will tell you stories and give you my wisdom and my belief that you’ll make it through the darkness that I know so well to the other side. I will pour into you my fire, my hope, my determination and my humor. 

I will do this through my writing. I will do this through my blog. I will do this through my films. I will do this in any way that I can since I’ve discovered that usually, the people who are brave enough to be my friends are far away from me. I have too much love to hold it all in for myself and my husband. 

And all that I wrote above about myself is true for him as well. 

We will create art for you. We will tell you our stories and spend our strength making you laugh, hope, cry, and giving you fire to fight for what’s right. Because we love you. 

And that’s our promise.