William Ishak

William,

There is something sacred about the people who were there from the beginning.

Not halfway through. Not when things were already figured out. From the actual beginning, when nobody knew what university was going to ask of them, when everyone was still finding their footing and figuring out who they were going to become inside of it. You were there then. You were there at the end too. And everything in between.

That is the full arc. That is everything.

The four of us (you, me, George, Bassam) became something over these years that I don't have a clean word for. Not just friends. Something more like a unit. The kind that forms when people go through the same fire at the same time and come out the other side still choosing each other. We sat in the same rooms, stressed over the same things, celebrated the same victories, and then we built CrashLens together on top of all of that. We didn't just share a chapter. We wrote one.

And you were in every page of mine.

What I want you to know, William, specifically you, is that your presence was never background noise to me. You were one of the reasons this chapter felt worth living fully. Your energy, your loyalty, the way you showed up consistently without making a performance of it. I noticed. I always noticed.

From the first day to the last, you were exactly who I needed around me.

Thank you for the whole road, not just the easy parts of it.

With love,

Elia