Just Like Home

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Hello, reader.

I often write acknowledgments as though they will be nailed to a church door for everyone to read. But right now, in this moment, before everyone else shows up—it’s just you and me. These words, as I write them, exist solely between my mind and the page in front of me; as you read them, they are all yours. We are alone on the page together, the same way two people can be alone together a world apart, connected only by a telephone line and the not-quite silence that comes before the word ‘hello.’

So: Hello.

I hope you are safe. I hope you are happy, if not all the time then at least here and there. I hope that you are treated with love and appreciation by the people you care about most. I hope there is never a moment in your life when the love of a monster feels like the only option you have.

Many of us spend our lives searching for something too big to truly name, something that is often (inadequately) summarized as ‘unconditional love.’ If you have gone out seeking this enormous thing, and found yourself in danger; if you have spent any part of your life thinking that something monstrous was normal or inevitable; if you have lost some part of yourself in the process of looking for a place that feels like home—I hope you know that you have always deserved a better kind of love than that.

If you’re not there yet, help is available twenty-four hours a day at the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-SAFE). There are more resources available at ncadv.org/resources.

That part was just between you and me, reader.

Now, here’s the part of this that’s for everyone.

Thank you.

If you helped make an idea into a story;

If you helped make a story into a novel;

If you helped package a novel into a book;

If you helped get that book into the hands of readers;

If you helped get me through the worst hard times;

If you helped me celebrate the best good times;

If you were in the group chat, the Slack, the Discord, the Supper Club, the living room, the kitchen;

If we went away together;

If you got in touch;

If you got back in touch;

If we talked every day;

If we fed each other, forgave each other, learned together, worried about each other;

If you taught me what love is like when there is no monster, and it’s just us, caring about each other as best we can and trying our hardest not to hurt anyone;

Thank you.

And to those who find yourselves in many places on that list: Thank you for making my life what it is. I love you. I could not do any of this without you.