It's strange, you know, how we sometimes trust those we know the least with our deepest, darkest struggles and our wildest hopes and dreams.

A mere few, a handful of people, know the raw struggle- the one that keeps me up at night, the hopes and wishes that spark from it a reflection of what I wish for my future and the fires of my past. And they may not even know it.

They say story after story I've captured reality, made it feel real, made characters they empathized with. That's because most of it's real. I've lived it. The characters, they exist in this world, they may be a mix of the people I've met, the friends I've gained, and the ones I've lost. The places correlate with places I've left memories, ghosts of who I've been and what might have been.

And that's the magic of fiction. You can take your memories and hopes and use them in stories, a subtle way of expressing the outcries of your heart: of your pain, of your pleasure.

"We're all stories in the end." -Doctor Who

Each person has a level of complexity with them, we just need to look past the surface, the facade they put up, to the battles they're fighting and the things they achieve, their dreams and failures and how those shaped them, until we see their very soul.

It's strange how we trust those we barely know with our darkest struggles and our wildest dreams. Because we know they're less likely to hurt us with our own fires than those closest to us.

Thank you to my Fiction Workshop class. Knowingly or unknowingly, you helped me through a lot this semester and gave me something to look forward to twice a week (as far as a class goes).

You gave me windows into your own lives through the stories you crafted and the comments you left on mine. You gave me a voice and a way to paint pretty pictures with my flying sparks. And you made me laugh.

You're the type of class that I could easily see getting a pizza with after class.

Thank you. And best of luck with all of your writings.