Goodbye, my friend

Apologies everyone, today’s post will not be about the news cycle. Instead, I will be sharing something a little more personal about my life. More news coverage next time.

---

Way before I started Independent Thought, I had another account on Facebook that I grew to about 40K followers.

It would focus on political commentary & satire, but was also a place to just to post funny things found on social media. For a long time, it was my only creative outlet, I truly treasured the community we built with it.

For 10 years, from 2010 - 2019, I spent a tremendous amount of time on this account & a few friends helped me administer it as well. While some came and went, my friend Kevin stayed throughout the entirety, helping me connect with over million people on during that span.

We gameplan what we would post, talk about what was & wasn’t working; he took it as seriously as I did.

It wasn’t much admittedly, but we both enjoyed being able to connect with people, & it allowed me to share my personality with the world. More importantly, it was something fun to share with a friend, as we would talk and joke about what actually resonated with people.

In the real world, I met Kevin in 2010, through a mutual friend who was a roommate of mine at the time. I would sometimes go over to his place to relax after classes, or sometimes we would meet up to go play pool at a local bar. There’s so many memories to account for in this post, but there’s a tremendous history there.

We bonded over a similar sense of humor, how we were both from another town in Montana, and we were both kids of color in an almost entirely White Missoula. I also appreciated how easy Kevin was to share things with. Honestly one of the least judgmental people I have ever met.

A little while after meeting him, Kevin developed epilepsy. Something he battled continuously over the years, but he always found a way to project positivity about a condition that forever changed his life.

I don’t know if I could’ve handled what he went through on a daily basis. A life with the constant threat of seizures is an incredibly taxing one. I was awe at his ability to navigate through it.

The constant trips to the doctors, the never ending carousel of new medications, studies on his brain, new procedures to try to help. It sounded like a nightmare. Then there were all the accidents he got into in his daily life. He obtained a lot of injuries over the years, due to sudden seizures.

Nevertheless, you did everything you could to persevere through that ordeal. Your strength through all of that, will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Today I woke up to a text that you were no longer with us & I haven’t known how to react to the thought that you’re gone.

I’ve spent most of today trying to connect with our mutual friends & make sure everyone was okay. You impacted so many of us & I don’t know that I can truly measure your impact in a simple Substack post.

In this moment, I don’t know how to get all of my feelings out, or how to express how much your friendship meant to me over the years…

But I will say - thank you.

Thank you for impacting my life.

Thank you for being my friend.

I hope I get to see you again someday.

Goodbye, my friend.