– April 3rd, 2016 –

It’s been two years. A total of 730 days and I have yet to have a week (or a day if i’m honest) that I don’t think about the experience I had at DcCon in 2016. I’ve made several posts about it before, but I never feel like it’s enough. To truly explain. So that’s why i’m gonna keep on talking about it, that one moment that has had a lasting impact on my life, the one I’ll be forever trying to find the words to say just how moving it was to me. This is pretty good start I’d guess.

It’s after midnight, which means it is officially April third and what I am quietly celebrating as the day I saw my future. I can’t do this without being a little dramatic and it’s making me cringe just writing it so feel free to click away. But seriously. April 3rd was the day I had promised myself that I needed to live to see, at a time I wasn’t sure I was gonna live to see the end of that week. Just one weekend, still several months away, but if I could find a way to hold on until then no matter what happens, I was gonna meet Jared. I was gonna be able to see Jared one more time and then if after that weekend I couldn’t find anything else to hold on to then so be it, at least I’d been able to see him one more time. Now this wasn’t the only thing I’d convinced myself to hold out for, and even at my lowest and most suicidal some part of still wanted to live because I kept coming up with things I had be alive for. But the convention was definitely the biggest. And if i’m honest, the convention could have gone by as uneventful a convention can and I probably would have still found some meaning in it, in any interaction I had with Jared because he means that much to me. But it didn’t. It was larger than anything i’d ever dreamed.

In the VIP meet and greet, not only had I drawn to sit next to Jared, I was able to ask him a question. And it was less about the question I asked that meant so much to me, but the way he answered it. In that short conversation, he made me feel heard. He made me feel just completely understood. In those two minutes, he validated very single hope I had been holding onto for the past few months, and sparked new ones for the future. It made me realize that there are things in my life worth living for, and that there are things I will need to be alive to see, because they’re bigger than anything I could have imagined. That no matter the pain I am going through, there are moments like those, of pure happiness and warmth that I have yet to experience. And they will make the months of hurt and pain feel so distant and so small, giving me the strength I need to get through them when they come again. And the crazy thing is? All it took was two minutes, just 120 seconds. That’s it. The entirety of the time it took for me to realize I wanted to see my story to the end. So while I can’t say Jared is the reason I am still alive, I know for sure I can say he is a huge part of why I realized life is worth living.