I guess it would be only fitting to end this journey the same way I started it: lost, entering the unknown, but sure of one thing. Sure that I at least would have the company of filling pages up and creating my own mini castles within lines. So to that, I dedicate this last one to you: the most faithful thing I’ve ever known.

These are the last words I will ever write for the safest place I’ve ever known.

This is the last time my words will be published to the home that has housed them for two years now.

So, while I leave this place of words, I want to dedicate this last piece, this last article, to them.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving your complete self to me and letting me use you any way I pleased. I am sorry if I did not do you justice; I am sorry if I took advantage of you—rushed you along just to fit in my timeline. I am sorry if I ever betrayed you and simply spat you out in the moment of carefree recklessness. You deserve better, and I am sorry if I couldn’t, if I didn’t, give it to you. I hope I can one day.

But also, thank you for blessing me.

You have given me the chance to freely express every emotion, even the ones that should not have been voiced—especially those—and the thoughts I never thought I would be able to voice aloud, but you gave me the courage to at least tell a piece of paper. I know it’s selfish to use them for personal gain, but I owe you all the glory; I am nothing without you.

And that is one of the most important things I want to say.

I am nothing without these words I write. You have given me an identity; you have made me a person I don’t think I would ever become without your help. You define me, and how crazy is it that I use you to define everything that happens in my head?

I cannot promise that I’ve written original things. I cannot promise that someone has never written them; I mean, after all, all the words we are using we get from those around us. We take them in and spin them around and spit them back out, maybe in a new order, maybe not. What I can promise is that every word I write I have meant; every word is something I’ve thought. So original words or not, all these thoughts are mine, and they are all special to me.

But you have done more than become something special to me; you have given me people who are the very definition of special.

You have created a palace around me filled with people who have somehow become my everything; you are all I have ever needed and will need. They give me new ways to describe perfect and divine everyday, and they all are the denotations of them. They redefine every ethereal adjective I’ve known and transformed them into words that perfectly describe themselves. I’m not sure I can think of a beautiful word anymore without thinking of them.

And finally, maybe most importantly, more than everything I’ve ever said, thank you reader for taking the time out of your day to read me.

Thank you for studying my words—bits and pieces of parts of me I have not yet found a way to share with those closest to me verbally. Thank you for deigning me important enough to just glance at, even if for a second; you have inspired me to continue on my wayward journey with words.

It has not been easy; it never will be I don’t think. I will forever be in a war with words, trying to find the right way to describe everything I want. Trying to find a way to express emotions in a new light. I have failed at this and I will continue to, but I will always try to do better. Give me room to grow, and I promise I will find my way to your heart.

But there are times right now where there is nothing I’d like to do more than forget words altogether; tell them you have no place here in my brain and your voices are too loud for me to focus in on my own. You keep me up at night and often rob me of enjoyment because so often, my thoughts chase after a way to describe the very events I’m witnessing right then; you have stolen moments I will never get back. And while it kills me to know this, I know that this game has always been give and take.

I cannot choose when I’d like to receive you, and I have to learn to be okay with receiving the too loud voices that run rampant in moments I can’t control.

But maybe it’s all worth it.

Because maybe these words aren’t new.

Maybe a piece of paper will always be a battle zone.

Maybe the reader has read them all before.

But they’re reading them now.

And isn’t that the whole point? The only thing that has ever mattered?

So, I guess I have done my job. My job here is finished.

So I will say thank you.

Thank you for letting me live through you. Thank you for letting me live through words. Even if they never meant anything to you, reader; they meant an eternity to me.

These are my last words; I hope they have treated you, the reader, well.