I found a letter I meant to give to a friend for their birthday awhile back. I’m sorry dude, here you go.

[verbatim:]

Dear (you),

Today is your birthday! You are another year older and another year taller than you were yesterday. Today you are technically a man: you can make big man-decisions, like purchasing tobacco products or pornography (you can masturbate until your lungs turn black!) because those are the sort of things men of your current age do. You are on step closer to the day your dreams may come true and just a bit farther from the day, long ago, you dreamt them all.

Today you are (only) finally 18. You have waited long for this moment (18 years, to be exact) and you can now enjoy the rest of your life. There are many more birthdays to come, waiting to traverse you into more years to love and forget and achieve and pick yourself up when you fall. Until those birthdays, I am giving you a letter to remind you that there will be many times in your eighteenth year where you will want to give up. You will begin questioning your present and your future and sometimes break under the stress. You will forget your way and see nothing where there is still everything. There will be other times where all your troubles and suffering will be repaid tenfold, and you will be happiest you have ever been. You will remember you are 18, wide-eyes and hungry for a world hungry for you. You will love many, as you’ve always, and be reminded that many love you.

With all this said, I truly wish you the happiest of birthdays for a lifetime. There are times in our strange relationship where we barely speak and others where we escalade to a higher plateau; you are always thought of as a great friend of mine, one of the very, very few who know me best.

Here is a picture of a hotdog holding a tiny balloon wishing you a happy birthday:
[insert drawing of hotdog holding a tiny balloon exclaiming happy birthday]

xoxo
(me)