Just you, Without a Lesson Plan

You never told me how to live, never gave me rules or handed me a book on the right way to be. But somehow, you taught me more than anyone else. Not with speeches or guidance, but with the way you show up— no questions asked, just a presence that makes everything feel less heavy. Even when we’re both quiet, there’s something comforting about the silence you bring. Like it's okay not to fill it with anything. You didn’t teach me to smile when I wasn’t ready, but you made it easier to find laughter in the wreckage of a bad day. You didn’t try to fix me, but you reminded me that broken doesn’t mean beyond repair. That there’s a way forward even when it feels like the world is stuck. You held space for all my mess, for my doubts, my long silences, my failed attempts to explain the weight I couldn’t carry alone. You made it okay to be unpolished, to be human, without needing to make sense of it. I didn’t need your advice to understand what you gave me— the quiet confidence that no matter how tangled things got, I’d find my way, with you beside me through it all.