Dear Dan,

I miss you a lot, which I’m sure you know, given that I often make my way to the church where your short but full life was celebrated. I sit by your memorial plaque every birthday, and every anniversary of you leaving us. I’m sorry for weeping noisily, and making everyone in the church uncomfortable – though you never did mind me crying.

There are loads of things I want to thank you for, but years ago, when you were in the middle of treatment and I was an anxious mess, you told me to keep a diary. Though, not quite a diary; instead, a version of all the things that were making my head a mess, but through someone else’s lens. You told me to write about what was happening, but to make it bigger, to add to it, to turn it into something that was far enough away from my reality not to trap me. You knew I needed to get it out, and that by distancing myself from my stuff, I could free myself from it.

When you died you were 26 and I was 24; I didn’t write anything. There were no words at all – and writing this is hard, because there is still so much pain when I think of you. But, a few years later, when I was still full of stuff, I remembered what you told me to do. I applied to a writing retreat and as I bombed down the motorway, I thought about everything I had unintentionally hoarded over the years: the people, the microaggressions, the anxiety, the anger, the upset. And when I sat to write, it all started to come out, through someone else’s lens. I had to turn it all into a novel that was bigger than me. I wrote something that made me feel less lonely, and has made a lot of other people feel less lonely, too.

I still get lonely when I think of you, and wish I could thank you in person for the advice you gave me. You taught me other things without knowing it, too: how to be grateful to wake up each day (even if it’s a grey one); that life won’t always go the way we want or expect it to; and that some things just aren’t in our control. But as long as we are here, we have to do the best we can.

I’ll never forget you, and every day I’m thankful for your love and friendship. You were the first person to tell me that I could do whatever I wanted, and on the days when the loud and scary voices in my head are telling me I can’t do anything, yours is the voice I remember.

Thank you for being my best friend.

Candice