Will You Go Out With Me? Circle One: Yes or No

You were my very first best friend. The friendship I look back on that really shaped my adolescence. I remember vividly the day that you told me you were leaving, moving with your mom out-of-state. When you told me, it was in a state of excitement about a new adventure and a fresh start. I was devastated.

A few days before you left, we buried some of our favorite treasures in a box and buried it in a plastic bag at the foot of the baseball diamond at our elementary school. It was stuffed animals and plastic trinkets and probably some letters that slowly melted away as water and time returned our precious things to primordial sludge.

You left and we stayed in the kind of contact that kids do. We wrote a few letters and spoke on the phone sporadically and I saw you when you came back to visit with your dad. We were both changing, growing up, and the distance that worked its way into our friendship felt as natural as the closeness we once shared. But we never lost contact fully, never all the way.

As we entered adulthood, I find the proximity of our views on humanity and our closely held beliefs astonishing. You devastated me a second time when you agreed to come to my wedding and then invited me to yours. When I had my second baby, you sent him a blanket and a bib and you've kept up on my life and my kids and offered words so frequently that have reminded me of my humanity, of my worth, of my intrinsic beauty. 

You knew me, the innermost parts of me, prior to most of the humans I still have contact with. And it is such a blessing to have you here with me, to remind me of the jackal-laughed human I once was. We obsessed over training-bras and periods and awful board games like Date Line. I think of late-night sleepovers and two am milkshakes and MASH and some kid with glasses named Brandon (I think) who I used to sit beside and get all the intel on someone named Jeff who, for the life of me, I cannot remember a single thing about.

He is nothing but a glint of a memory, but you and your friendship and the naïveté and innocence of our friendship which has now transitioned into a shared perspective on life, friendship, kindness, and community obligation is a grace for which I am infinitely thankful and more than a bit awestruck.

Spoiler alert: I did NOT end up with Jeff (but wasn't he HOT, though?!?).