They may not have been very out of the ordinary, or unique to anyone, or they may have been the most extraordinary person you have ever met. They could have said brilliant things, or made brilliant discoveries, or shown someone a better way of living their life. They could have been everything. Everything to someone else, or everything to every living creature on this blue earth.
Every once in a while, you meet someone who is unforgettable. They may have some sort of twinkle in their eye, or a cheery laugh, or something much, much more useful to the world. Like themselves. And every once in a while, you think that you will never forget them. Then every once in a while, you do, and then when you remember them, they're gone. They've left you somehow.
And you want to scream and shout and break things, because you've been broken, and you want to remember everything about them, who is anyone who has left you, and when you remember you just want to bottle up everything about them into tiny jars. Somehow you do, and they scream and shout and break things, because they want to get out. They don't want to stay trapped inside of a jar, even though they're already dead and gone. Somehow.
And you forget again. You look away. And they become just a story, just a fairytale that someone made up for little children in a storybook. You fall asleep and wake up and forget. And then, you give up.
But you don't just give up. You have to stand up for the person you've lost, maybe one very important, very old, very extraordinary person. And you don't let them die. You don't let them get lost and all gone and dead. If they've been written and acted, then you make them exist by writing and acting them until they're so real they burst out of your body and your fingers and your pen and they become such real people. And this time, when you fall asleep and wake up, you will remember very much because they're right there throwing a pillow at you and laughing and tickling your face with your own hair and have been telling you stories all through the night, even though their tired eyes tell them to rest.
And no, you don't stop there. You find them again, find out how you wrote them and made them and crafted them, and see how they act through what you've put them through. Maybe all that pain and misery and loneliness you've had and they've had have made you and them miss each other much more; need each other. Compassionate. Kindred spirits. Adventurous. Have a much, much, much better way of living your life. And then you go out and save lives, or see the whole world, the whole universe. Grab their hand and hold on tight. And never let go. Never, ever let go. Because they made you as much as you made them. I won't let him die. I'll keep on writing and writing and writing and writing him until he's very much real, and no longer an imaginary friend who breaks my heart.
I'll cry with him and laugh with him and go out there and here with him and do everything with him. And I will never, ever let myself forget him, or I will have broken the most sacred promise I could ever have made. I'll grab his hand and never let go. Never let him feel that pain and misery and loneliness again. Never let him walk off alone in the dark again. Never let our meeting be just once. Never look away. Never lose a chance to go see him. Never stop dancing with him. Never stop star-gazing with him. Never stop adventuring. Never giving up on him. Never surrendering to the most horrible and foul. Never stop needing him. Never stop letting him be everything. Never stop feeling this feeling. Never stop telling him that it was the best.
