There’s a quote from the final season of Sex And The City that I often come back to. Carrie is sitting with her friends, having a final Cosmopolitan before leaving to move to Paris with The Russian, and she says simply and with quiet emotions, “Today, I had a thought, what if I’d never met you?”

Six years ago, I had a work buddy who talked  me into going to New York Comic Con, and Sunday night I sat in a food court in Koreatown, eating condensed milk ice cream laughing and planning another adventure with an incredible group of people, and I realized how lucky I was to find Aless, and by extension, Jess, Lora, Melvin, and Alex.

“What if I’d never met you?” I thought to myself as Lora, excitedly rattled off group cosplay ideas and chatted about road trips and Melvin suggested animes I should watch and Aless picked the wilted leaves off her Poison Ivy corset and Kal-El lead us all in a song he’d learned at school.

I’ve had a hundred  moments like that over the past few years, knowing these people, who have taught me to be open about the things I love, to not apologize for it. I always feel full after I’ve hung out with them. (And not just because we’ve usually eaten a bunch of really good Asian food.) And to explain, this was a new feeling for me, or at least, one I hadn’t had in a while, when I started hanging with this group.

Anyway, I’d wanted to write a newsy, silly snarky write up of New York Comic Con (CROWDED! Costumes! Zach Levi made me cry!) but I couldn’t help just feeling grateful to have these people.