Hi buddy.
Where do I begin with this? I kinda really don't know. When I say that we have valued you more than everybody else, I mean it. You nay not see these things, but they don't exist for you to see - they exist for you to experience. You were the only one we ever had a surprise party for once. Maybe if we will never be able to get together as an entire group, we just have to accept it. We should never accept disappointment if we had never tried our hardest, but when we have, and when it still turns out some other way that isn't favourable, it is also a value to be able to let it go. Time changes anything and everything. You can bet that our family will definitely be cracked up by time. There will be bigger pieces - that's the majority of us; and there will be islands and smaller pieces - that's those who are lost and far away from us. Time is a determining factor in who stays or goes. Nothing can remain constant - everything gets eroded with time. If somebody gets pulled or wanders far away and we have tried our very best to keep them here but they don't remain, we have tried, and so we can and should accept disappointment. Maybe with time. Time may lead them back, but we should take what we can get. It's such a waste if we always spend our present lamenting for an entire family to appear, that we gradually forget and neglect the entire family already present.We should make those present feel significant, and make those absent want to come back. In other words, appreciate those that stay; ignore those that go just for now. It's a simple concept, but we find it so hard to do. Can we ever truly let those who leave just walk away? No we can't. But we have to try. If they were meant to come back, they will. But if they don't, we have our new (smaller, but still happier) family.
You are very obviously the centreman. You hold the strings that pull us all together, even when you're sometimes furthest away. But you don't have to feel obliged to be. The very essence of the family is that you have to be happy with 1) where and who you are, 2) who and what others are like, 3) yourself. If you can't fulfill all three conditions, it is very likely others are not doing the same - and then the family will fall apart. That is also the very reason why many cliques have crumbled but ours still remains. It isn't easy, and we wouldn't have been able to do it without you. But you should also know that if you're not happy being the centreman, it will only show with time, and it will hurt you, and more so, all of us. I'm not trying to say that we take it as it's your given role to be a centreman. Definitely, no. We see it as you being indispensable. If you were to cave, so would TCF, and that's why we do our best to make you feel remembered. Sometimes, when everybody is in proximity with one another, we tend to forget how hard it is to be away from them. That is precisely why we need you to be our eyes and heart, and let us know how that feels. It is very selfish of us, I admit, but who else can do a better job? Ask yourself and try and answer that. If you never mattered, we would never have tried to have occasional dinner dates, group crashes, karaoke parties and birthday celebrations. If you didn't matter to me, I would have given up on you a long time ago knowing all your flaws. But I didn't and I never will. I still proudly proclaim you as my BBF.
Maybe we were too indifferent before, and so we tended to neglect your feelings. We try, but whether you see it or feel it, it's up to you to interpret. Like I said before, certain things don't exist for you to see, but for you to feel. If you haven't felt it before, maybe we're doing it wrong, but the truth is we're willing to show you how much we care, and we do. It just depends on whether you realise the little things. The tiniest gestures. They count too.
Sometimes when you feel that any of us aren't cooperating, it could be because we're going through a really tough time. We treat TCF as family, but even I don't tell my real family everything. There will be secrets we keep from one another, and I hope we can each respect that and understand when each of us choose to keep away for a while. This is a family, but it is a family by choice. It takes distance to understand the importance of proximity. If we want to stroll alone for a while, let it be, but trust that we will come back, as we trust that TCF will understand the pain, and listen when we need it. That's why I will always play counsellor to whoever needs it. I will never turn my back on anybody who needs a listening ear.
We were all people with nothing. Then we started something. And now we aren't alone. It's accompanied us across years and milestones. I'm sure that's powerful enough to speak for itself.