In case it's goodbye, Twitter.

The things I would have said.

There is suddenly the possibility Twitter may truly implode and just cease to be. No warning or farewell. No time to say goodbyes or eulogize or mourn. Just… suddenly be gone.

Were that to happen, along with a certain grief, I’d feel a deep regret that even as it was becoming clear there might be a sudden end, I hadn’t said the things I wish I had.

So, I am going to say them now. And I am going to say them here so that even if none of the millions of words I’ve written over there survive, these, at least, will.

I loved Twitter… or loved what it enabled, I suppose.

I, as much as anyone, criticized and complained about it. I, like everyone else, constantly griped about how broken and toxic and terrible it was.

And it was.

But it was also beautiful and important and irreplaceable in ways.

In November of 2019, my father died on my son’s birthday. That in and of itself was not devastating in any particular way. We had been long estranged. It was like getting a telegram about a relative you have long known only from afar.

His death, however, touched off this set of familial dominos that were just about the last thing I needed at the time. After an entire decade of traumas and losses and hardships, I was just worn down. Whereas, I might have been a redwood at the beginning of it — strong, resilient, impervious to wind and storm — those years just whittled me down to sticks.

My father’s death heaped complication and baggage onto an overloaded cart I was already struggling to keep from toppling over. By February, that struggle came to a head and the emotional wheels just came off the cart so to speak.

It was like when a person thrown overboard swims with everything they have to try to stay afloat but eventually just gets pulled under. I was sort of drowning in plain sight while people on the beach were making sand castles and getting some sun. And that’s the way drownings often happen. People are within sight but don’t see.

I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t tell my friends or family. I didn’t post about it. I just kept it to myself. Privately, I was at the very bottom of a deep well, alone, in a crushing depression. It’s the worst I have ever felt in my life.

Then, someone who followed me on Twitter reached out to me via DM. They said they felt like I hadn’t been myself and they just wanted to know if I was doing okay… and, since they had a feeling I wasn’t, they forwarded me a little gift card to maybe lighten my week.

I’m not sure if I have ever been more touched in my life.

In the several years prior, the hardest stretch of my life, my own sister hadn’t once reached out to even ask if I was okay.

But a stranger on Twitter who followed me and come to feel like they knew me, got the sense I might be hurting and was worried about me out of just… caring.

It meant a ton to me. At that particular moment, it meant the world to me. It was light. It was sunlight at the bottom of a well. I choke up even writing about it.

Twitter was a lot of things. Some terrible. Some, so very good.

It was the place where I sometimes sat down and just poured my heart out… just absolutely laid myself bare in the rawest of moments… and then hit “post” for all the world to read.

It’s where I wrote about the first thing in my son’s life I was missing… a drum performance… and then I hit post and sobbed.

It’s where I wrote about the death of my alcoholic father on my son’s birthday and the impossibly complicated labyrinth of feelings that came with it.

It’s where I wrote about my grief and losses and heartbreaks and poverties and struggles.

It’s where I just put my shit out there over and over.

And every single time, after I did, the same thing happened.

I got inundated with messages from people sharing their own stories. Deeply personal, raw, confessional stories - many containing things they’d literally never told anyone.

I have literally never posted something personal on Twitter without at least some people reaching out to tell me it made them feel seen… understood… accepted… un-alone.

Over the years, I have gotten unbelievably kind messages from people about how something I wrote helped them or changed their actual life in some unfathomably large way. It helped them make peace with a trauma, or face the end of their marriage, or realize something about themselves or accept that they needed some professional support, or… or… or…

The thing is, it wasn’t really me per se. It wasn’t my words. I hadn’t done something all that special or unique or important.

All I had done was be open in the very public place that was Twitter.

And for some people, that mattered. For some, it opened a door that wasn’t open anywhere else in their lives. It gave them a chance to see that the hard, private things they felt like they alone carried with them… well, a lot of other people were carrying them too.

And the conversations that fell out of those threads — the comments and interactions in the replies — they offered a window into something some of those people had truly never even seen in their own lives: what loving support really looks like. What acceptance looks like.

That was Twitter also.

At its best, it was an unparalleled connector of human beings joined together by common cause or interest.

It made the world feel smaller. It made it feel less lonely. It enabled people who are marginalized find whole communities of peers and allies.

It bridged distance and difference.

It was the sole reason I met a slew of people I now adore.

It is where I started writing. It is why I am a writer now.

It is where I shared stories of my greatest joy: being a father.

And it is where thousands of people have shared their greatest joys with me.

Every Friday, people posted their One Good Things… and among the thousands and thousands of replies over the years, many were celebrations of the things that matter the absolute very most in life. The truly life-changing moments of boundless joy. Marriages and first homes and children; lifetime achievements and personal milestones; hardships overcome, health struggles conquered. All of the things that matter.

Weeks when I was late to post the call for One Good Thing, every single time, someone reached out to me to say “Are you going to post… I have something and I’ve been waiting all week to share it.”

They waited all week to share it… in that place we made on Twitter.

Having people to share our lives with — and having people who share theirs with us — is one of our most fundamental needs as human beings.

Community is love. Connection is love.

I don’t know what will become of Twitter. I hope it survives. I hope it preserves the things that are the very best about it.

If it doesn’t though — if someday all that is left of my time there is this eulogy — I will be glad to have said all of this to you while we were still gathered together.

Community is love. And I have loved ours so very much.