735 Miles

735 Miles

That’s how far apart my best friend and I live. She is my “friend” soulmate. My sister. We may not be blood, but we don’t need to be to know how much we mean to each other. I cannot imagine my life without her in it. She’s an incredible person who showed me what its like to have a best friend.

Don’t get me wrong, I consider my husband one of my best friends, but he’s a different category. He’s my other half, my life partner. We have had many ups and many downs and I love him with all my heart, but he’s just on his own level. They don’t compare.

My best friend and I met in junior high school. We were friends, but not in the same “click” per say. She played sports and was in my opinion a “popular” girl. I was anything but that. Friendship was something, and still is something that I struggle with. I’m weird. I’m really anti-social and love to just be alone or with my family. I had friends as a child, but I felt incomplete. In my neighborhood, I had several girls I played with. One, I still keep in contact with today, but we aren’t close anymore. We grew up and life happens, its normal. She still my oldest friend to this day though. In elementary school, I felt desperate for friends. I even got my first and only “bad mark” because I ran on the black top trying to get to a girl whom I was trying to be friends with.

As elementary passed, I had several friends, but lost them in 5th grade due to my medical condition and that’s when it really became a struggle for friendship.

I transferred schools and started fresh. Junior High School. I met people, including my best friend, who wasn’t my best friend then, and had friends. Finally. But, my (what I realize now was anxiety) always made me wonder if they even liked me. Was I even good enough?

In 8th grade, I developed a crush on a friend of one of my friends. I look back now and I realize how stupid this whole situation was, but I guess this crush of mine screwed things up. Typically, our group of friends would walk together to 7-11 area after school, this particular day, well, they all left without me. I still don’t know what happened, to be honest. That was it, I guess. I started hanging out with some other friends of mine. Things were going well and all of the sudden they dropped me too. I still don’t know what I did there. By the end of 8th grade, I only had a couple people that would really hang out with me, but it felt like no one really wanted to be my friend. I felt like I was just too weird and too much of a loser for real friends.

By high school, my old friends all talked to me again, but nothing felt the same. They all their best friends and I was just me. I thought I had a best friend then, I called her my best friend to most people, but to her, I wasn’t. I discovered this on accident during English class. We had to write a paper on our best friend and I chose her. I accidently seen her paper one day and she had written about another friend of ours and I felt crushed. That was the last time I had even thought I had a best friend until now.

When I married my husband, my little brother was my “man of honor”, my older brother was a “bridesman” and my husband’s female best friend was a bridesmaid. I had settled in my mind that I wasn’t meant to have a best friend and that was just life.

I’ve had some good friends since then, but most people already have their “best friends”. There wasn’t room for me in that position and it was something I just needed to get used to.

Besides, I’m weird and awkward and I hate the phone. I’m bad a communicating and if you don’t reach out to me, it may be awhile before I reach out to you.

My husband and I have been married for almost 10 years now. I have some pretty good friends, pretty close ones actually. I love them all dearly. They are kind of like me, we can go weeks or months without talking, but pick up like it was yesterday. They are my kind of people. I don’t actually have to try.

And then there’s her. My best friend. I was going through a particular rough patch this past February. I was suffering from depression and anxiety. I was diagnosed with something called Adjustment Disorder. I don’t like change and in February there was a lot of change happening. Because of this, I reached out to my friend. I was having a particular rough time one night and I saw she was online. We had talked every once in a while, made sure to stay in touch even after junior high school. We weren’t close, but we were friends and right now, I needed a friend.

We talked for hours! I could tell her anything. It was like the flood gates opened and she was there to catch it, and she did. Something happened that night, we both needed each other and it was the universe setting that in motion. We talked nightly for weeks as I was
getting through my rough patch and she ended up with her own. It was like we have been close for all our life. Like, this is how it was supposed to be. Sometimes I think back and wonder if I hadn’t been so shy and if she hadn’t been in the crowd she was in, if we wouldn’t have hit it off before, but you know what, I think we needed to get together when we did. It was just the right time.

Now, we can go days or weeks without talking. We don’t seem to make it to months, we need each other to much for that, I think. She’s my sister, through and through and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.

She lives 735 miles from me. That’s nothing to us. She visited a few months back and I was so grateful for the time we got to spend together. I’m hoping we can take a trip to visit her in the near future. All these years pining for a “best friend” and she was just waiting for me, for the right time. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that all we needed was the right time?

There are so many times when I’m walking around out and about and I see something that just reminds me of her. Just the other day, I found something and will be sending it to her shortly. (I’ll update after she gets it because it’s a surprise!)

My brother recently told me he thought our friendship was weird. He didn’t understand how quickly you could become friends with someone like we did. I tried to explain that it was just the right time for both of us and we just knew. Sometimes, you just know. I know without a doubt, I love her and she loves me and she’s my sister through and through. It feels good to be able to say that I have a best friend and actually mean it.

I also know that some people probably think this is totally weird and that having that person shouldn’t matter, but for someone like me, it means the world. I’m truly grateful for her friendship and also for the friendship of the few other people who can actually tolerate my weirdness. I get it, I’m just weird.

Thank you for everything, Jordan. I can’t imagine my life without you in it.