Amanda and Madie, my daily sounding boards. I couldn’t have done this without you.
To my wonderful team: Hellie, Caitlin, and Alyssa—thank you for obsessing over this story with me, for championing it, for fighting for it. Todd, for always busting balls and making me laugh. Thank you for being the wisest guy I know. Celia, a founding father in my little heart of hearts, I’ll be grateful forever for you for DMing me on Instagram and becoming my editor. Emad and the rest of my Orion family, thank you for trusting me and hearing me and being open to trying out of the box things, I love doing this with you guys. And Christa, you have loved this story in an unwavering way since the minute you saw it. Thank you for loving it so much you moved mountains to get it, I’m so glad to be doing it with you.
And then lastly, to myself in 2008, who thought of this book in a nail salon in Maroubra, who tried for years and years to write this book, with infinity start-stop-starts that bore down on your consciousness and made you doubt that you could ever be what we’ve eventually become.
You did it. You stopped only writing when you felt like it. You learned to tap into old emotions, not just seek out new and terrible ways to feel things that were worth writing about. You developed a work ethic. You’re not stupid or incapable （you just have ADHD） （SURPRISE!）。
You would be both delighted at where we are and irritated that it took so long to happen （but also you are sometimes an idiot and have a tendency to be entitled; in 2023 we are still an idiot but hopefully a bit less entitled）。
In 2023, I’m not totally sure if we believe in time as a linear thing, and so I say all this to you hoping that through the bending of light and time you somehow receive a vague sense of hopefulness that everything is going to be okay, because it is. It’s really very okay.