Liz Moody thanks for you for reading 'My Mind' for so long

I've never been particularly good at goodbyes. There seems to be a fine line between embarrassingly sentimental and superficially shallow. I've never been good at staying in the lines, so I tend to avoid them altogether. I'll slip out of my apartment and onto a plane before dawn, leaving my friends and family to look around and wonder, where's Liz? Or, in the case of my father, is Liz dead?

And I realize that I've done this to you, readers, and I apologize for that. So this is my phone call, my postcard from afar, my contact after months of nothing -- I'm here! And I'm not dead (yet)! I've come back because I owe it to you all, who make my words feel worthwhile, who make me write when I want to give up, who send me letters of encouragement, and -- often even more encouraging -- letters of hate. I owe it to you to say goodbye.

I've been writing this column for six years, since I waltzed into my Teens in the Newsroom editor's office. "I think I should have a column," I said.

"You do?" she replied. "Why?"

"Well ... there's no columns written by teenagers. And I'm a teenager. And ... I write." I paused for a moment, searching for more persuasive points. I had nothing. "So I think I should have a column," I finished.

In my 15-year-old head, this was a convincing argument. The next week, I wrote my first column about an unfulfilled quest to find fondue in San Francisco. I didn't know it then, but I was setting the tone for the next six years: Getting lost and food became recurring themes in my writing.

My second column was my first controversial one, about love of all types, including my account of witnessing a gay couple kissing on the streets of San Francisco. I got letters from people agreeing with me, from gay men and women with stories of getting shouted at for public displays of affection on the streets of Modesto, and from people who thought homosexuality should be exercised only in the privacy of one's own home, if even there. But in my mind, the content was almost trivial -- people had not only read what I had written, but cared enough to write back!

This is the first time I realized the power of words, and it was because of you. This is the first time I realized that people do listen, and people do care, and it was because of you.

I continued to push boundaries and test your tolerance and limits. I argued with my editors over instigative columns about prostitution and underage drinking. I spent nights awake crying over letters I received -- letters telling me that I shouldn't be writing, that I should go to hell, that my opinion didn't deserve to be heard.

"Do they realize I'm just a teenager?" I'd ask my dad, with tears streaming down my face. "Do they realize that I'm a real person?" I knew that you did, though, as you traveled with me, my constant companions as I hiked waterfalls in Argentina, lost all my money in Brazil, and found myself at the edge of the desert in Morocco.

When the loneliness of being thousands of miles from everyone who knew me became overwhelming, I could pick up my pen and paper and write, and then I knew -- I had all of you. You were with me for my first days of college, through the gaining and losing of friends, through learning how to navigate this world.

So, while this is a goodbye column, more than that it is a thank-you note. (Yes, Mom, I'm writing a thank you note!) Thank you to all of you -- you've meant more to me than you know. It may be the end of Out of My Mind, but my gratitude and appreciation come straight out of my heart.

Liz Moody, a Johansen High School graduate, is a student at the University of California at Berkeley. She can be reached at lizmoody@berkeley.edu.