Charbel Al Kadi

Charbel,

There is a version of me that only you knew.

Not the version with the degree or the projects or the plans. The one before all of that. The one who was still figuring out what he was made of, still testing the edges of who he could become. That version of me walked through high school alongside you, and I don't think I've ever properly thanked you for what that meant.

High school friendship is a specific kind of thing. It happens before you've built your walls properly. Before you know how to perform yourself for the world. So what you see in each other is just the raw, unfinished, honest thing, and somehow you like each other anyway. That kind of acceptance plants itself deep. It doesn't leave just because years do.

You were there during the years that shape everything that comes after. The years I was learning how to be a person. And you made those years feel less like something to survive and more like something to live. That is not small. That is the kind of thing a person carries with them forever without always knowing it.

I know life has taken us down different roads. That is what life does. But I want you to know that when I think about where I came from and who helped form the foundation of who I am today, you are part of that foundation. Quietly, firmly, the way the best things always are.

Thank you for knowing me before I knew myself, and for making that feel like enough.

With love,

Elia