For Tuna

I know you’d agree with me that what is hard nowadays is to find the real.

Real experiences. Real growth. Real healing. Real people. Real relationships. Real emotions. Real loss, real gain.

R.A. Salvatore once wrote "Do keep ever present in your thoughts, my friend, that an illusion can kill you if you believe in it." This does make sense. You know better than anyone else what the illusions did to me. The depth I put in souls shallow. The value I gave to words empty. The excitement I threw myself in after experiences cheap.

And as Salvatore says, the death is real even when it comes through an illusion. Thankfully I am alive and do not recall putting myself in mortal danger for anything real or imaginary; but illusions did hurt me. And the pain is real, too, as you know.
Where the searing pain is real, the recovery must be real as well.
And it is so easy to mistake the illusion of recovery with real recovery, isn’t it? More often than not we think we are cured; but our hearts are at ease only as long the unseen will of life brings back exactly what we know will haunt us until we are driven mad.

So how do we find true healing? That is a mystery.

I know only part of the answer. I know I could never be cured for real time after time without your good company, without your friendship, without your support. Real company. Real friendship. Real support.

In a world of many illusions and disputed truth, your friendship, with its infinite real quality, has been and continues to be a true blessing. We’ve been figuring out what’s real and what is not side by side, like true brothers, for almost four years now. We fought against my devils together. We fought against your devils together.
We stood our ground, we will stand our ground—doesn’t matter what life throws –or refuses to throw- at us. I have full confidence in this. Real confidence.

Happy birthday to you, and many happy returns. The world must turn and look at you if it is wishes to see what a friend should be like. If it wishes to find someone real.