#the response to this fic has overwhelmed me and strengthened me since 2016 and i am genuinely humbled by it

[andromeda3116]

It’s an older fic of yours but Such Selfish Prayers is a great work that inspired me to be a better person and to have healthy boundaries, could probably say it was definitely at the start of my healing journey

I am so glad to hear that, truly. such selfish prayers is probably the most important fic I've ever written, which came as a bit of a surprise, because, as I've said before, I started it simply out of frustration with how Katara was treated in canon. I never expected to change anyone's life with it, and it's been very humbling to realize that my words have touched thousands of people. I've gotten many comments saying how readers were inspired by it, or given hope in a dark time, or even that it made them realize they wanted to pursue a different career. That it started your healing process kind of brings tears to my eyes, I'm so glad that I was able to help you.

One of the things I put into that fic was my own recent break-up and how I was processing it myself -- how do you deal with someone you love but can't be with? Who -- if you were to stay with them -- would be holding you back? And they loved you and they didn't mean to harm you but they were still wrong for you in ways you don't know how to say? Even more, he had reached out to me in what I thought -- as Katara did -- an attempt to become friends again, but was actually an attempt to get back together. The line, "I thought he was ready to be friends again, I was ready to be friends again," was a direct quote from a text I sent a friend that day, after an incredibly uncomfortable lunch date. I had to tell him that the door was closed, and wouldn't be opening again, and it hurt. That sense of "I wish I could make this be right for us just so I could stop hurting you, but I cannot choose you over me" came from a very personal place.

A lot of that fic is from that kind of personal place, like I said in the author's note of chapter 4. And it's very much idealistic in a way that -- I will freely admit -- isn't entirely realistic. Or, it wouldn't be that simple. (Ultimately, he and I could not be friends again.) But I wrote the world I wanted to see, wanted to make possible. Believing that things can change for the better, that we can stand up for what we believe in and build a better world, even if it's tedious and crawling two steps forward, one step back the whole damn way, even if it takes all our lives and more, we can make a better world and even if we ourselves don't see it, it matters so much because we can build the foundation of that and it will last and grow -- believing that this is all possible is the first step to making it be possible.

That hope and belief may, in the real world, simply be a small candle in the swallowing darkness, but it's a stubborn one and as long as we don't let it go out, it will light the way and someday -- someday -- the light will spread.

I didn't set out to write a story about that candle, but in the end I found I had, and the fact that it's spread to thousands -- and been read (or at least clicked on) by 170,000 people (170,000, it blows my mind) -- has swept me away and, in a way, kept my own candle burning. I may be small and helpless against the tides of everything happening in the world around me, but my words have inspired and helped and strengthened thousands of people. We give each other strength and hope through these awful times, and that hope and togetherness are the things that can change the world.

So, thank you for this. I am so, so happy that I have helped you, and so, so proud of you for going on your healing journey and learning to set your boundaries, it's important and hard and worth it and scary, and I am absolutely rooting for you the whole way.