“Everything is nothing and nothing is everything.” A year ago, I don’t think I would’ve understood that quote, but I’ve spent the last 8 months living within a one bedroom radius of Kaitlyn and honestly, I can’t celebrate her using any other words. 

Because I don’t know how she does it, how effortlessly she makes ‘nothing’ feel like everything. All of a sudden I’m baking with her on a Tuesday evening just because and the kitchen is suddenly my favorite room in the house. I think maybe that’s all love is, just wanting to be in the kitchen with someone. And suddenly we’re sitting four feet away from each other in the living room eating the Doordash we insisted we’d order less of and we’re sharing tweets with one another back and forth captioned “this is us” and it’s always us every time. I think the world is bigger when you constantly see your friends in it and it’s less lonely when they laugh at the same fucked up things you do. And all of sudden it’s a Saturday night and we’ve taken over the dining room table with craft supplies and board games and jigsaw puzzles (all of which are things Kaitlyn just owns by the way) and suddenly I forget that I even struggle with sobriety because how could this not be enough for me? I think even in another universe, one where I have my perfect life, these moments with Kaitlyn still exist. 

Happy birthday, Kaitlyn. You make everything better including me and it is such a privilege to sit front row for everything you do and are. There is absolutely no one else in this world I’d rather do nothing with. I love you. I love you. I love you. 

Below is a list of sentences and paragraphs I wrote but didn’t end up using in the Instagram post for the sake of brevity. There are not enough words to ever sum up what this friendship means to me, but that will never stop me from trying.

What we love, we mention which is why I refuse to ever shut the fuck up about Kaitlyn. (This was a potential hook rejected for obvious reasons despite irrefutable validity)

Kaitlyn took me to a Novo Amor concert while I lived in Indy before I ever heard of him and now I listen to him almost every day so I don’t know if she knew who I was before I did or if she has just made me more like her. All I know is that every year I get to celebrate being her friend I am less of a stranger to myself.

When we were making friendship bracelets, it felt like I found something I didn’t even know I lost. Kaitlyn makes me like the color pink again.

I know the world is bigger than just my apartment and the gym (at least that’s what I’ve been told). But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fucking terrified of it. I have all this anxiety I don’t know what to do with and no one ever knows about it because it clashes with my tattoos and my Instagram aesthetic. But then I’ll talk to Kaitlyn and when she tells me it’s going to be okay I believe her. Because I have watched her move to a new city and travel across the world and sneak into bars and be kicked out of them lol all while she feels the same way I do. Kaitlyn shows up to places and for people endlessly. It is the kind of gentle courage no one ever notices enough to clap for. It has redefined how I aspire to carry myself in the world.

I check her horoscope every single time I check mine.

A couple months ago, I read “this ordeal of living is collaborative” and all I could think about is how me and Kaitlyn take turns making each other coffee in the morning. I’d like to counter that when living is collaborative, it is no longer an ordeal.

The first week I moved to Chicago, I watched all 4 seasons of Succession with Kaitlyn so I could watch the series finale with her two weeks later. It’s been 8 months and we still send each other Succession memes on Twitter. There’s this quote, “To make something special, you just have to believe it’s special” and it never fails to amaze me how effortlessly Kaitlyn makes everything special. She gets excited for things and invites you to be a part of them and in doing so creates something collectively profound enough to endure long after the initial thing ends. It’s this hopeful nostalgia as if to say, “I am excited about this with you now and I cannot wait to still be excited about this with you in the future. There is so much uncertainty, but this will not be part of it.”