Dear Erin,

There is so much that I have left unsaid that I shouldn't have. There are so many emotions that I feel that I kept bottled up. In my life I have suffered, but there have always been those good things in life that reminded me that there is a reason to go on. You are not one of those good things. You are one of those GREAT things that not only give me the strength to go on, but gives me hope that their is joy and happiness in my future.

A lot of people don't know our journey, but it is a friendship that I value above many things in my life. For a person who has suffered and fears abandonment you have remained constant. Like all friendships, we may not have always seen eye-to-eye, but your loyalty and your love has never been in question.

Way back when I was first starting on my journey as Katie, I wrote a story on Fictionmania. It was called The Wishing Blanket and it may have been the best thing that I've ever done (not the best written). It gave me a voice for what I was feeling, it gave me an avenue to not keep who I am bottled up inside, and it lead to a random email from a person I have never met that would change my life forever.

It was a different Big Closet back then, much smaller, less stories, and poor Erin was reading them all before they got posted. She formatted, she edited, she whimsically complained that if I didn't figure out the difference between their and there and your and you're I would never be posted again :) She encouraged my writing and she encouraged me to grow as an author and as a person.

I was at college at the time. Floundering. I remember the time we video chatted on Yahoo. I did not look like a rose. I sported a goatee and a shaved head (what was I thinking). But you didn't judge me. You didn't mock or diminish what I was feeling about myself. I was the one who joked "Not what you were expecting, huh?" But you, as you have been all these years, were supportive. Instead of dismiss my feelings of being trans you told me that you knew a lot of people who started off much rougher than I did, that you saw potential. I still remember that because it meant so much to me.

After college was done, calamity struck. I wound up getting arrested for something that I did not do and was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison. Many people abandoned me, in real life and on the internet. But you stayed there for me. It was those weekly phone calls that saw me through a darkness that I thought would never end. I know you never supported my decision to give in and take a plea, but you never left my side either. Instead of being a person I knew on the internet, you became a lifeline. I never told you how important those calls were, I didn't want you to feel like you were required to talk to me. But there were some weeks were as soon as I was done talking to you for those 15 minutes that I counted down the time before I would call again.

Even if it wasn't for your friendship. You have created something wonderful here on Big Closet. A place where it is not simply authors posting stories, but a true community. I have met friends and oddly enough, if not for this site, my future husband (still waiting for a proposal but I'm told one is coming). This place contains the only family some of us have. You should be commended. The fact that you weren't on the top 100 transpeople in America shows how limited that list was. I wish I was in a position to support this site indefinitely because it is one of the proofs that the internet can provide some really great stuff.

I wanted to say these things publicly. You are more than a friend and I love you. May you find someone to bless your life as much as you have blessed mine.

Love,

Katie (no more initials, no more little, and further along on my journey than I ever dreamed because of you.)