Best friend for life

  We were sitting in a classroom talking about those silly things teenagers talk about. Friends who really aren't, enemies who have done us no serious wrong, how hard/boring school is, and love that we don't understand but swear we do. How the conversation started I have no idea, I was very shy in school so I’m sure I didn’t start it, and I do not know how it happened, but suddenly we were opening up to each other. We told each other everything and anything, our deepest fears and desires, our most humiliating moments, the things that truly made us happy. Sitting there in that classroom we talked to each other like two old friends, long lost but never forgotten and always thought of. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, we were best friends for life. We've played jokes on each other, and made fun of each other. We've talked with each other about things we could not tell anyone. We've cried on each other’s shoulders, and held each other when the world was too cold. We've carried each other’s burdens, and worried one over the other as if we were two parts of the same whole. And we are, connected by a bond and a line that is unbreakable and intangible. We’ve gone sledding together, drank together, we have even showered together; don’t get too excited we were fully clothed, well until I took my shirt off and through it at our friends’ mom. We were wild and crazy, young and free, and totally ignorant about life, as it should be for teenagers. We each had our own problems at home, which we talked to each other about, and troubled relationships, which she talked about because I didn’t really have any, and it helped to get us through school and life.  In the years since high school we have been apart, but never truly apart. When I was in the desert she wrote to me, and wrote to me, and I barely ever wrote back, but she still wrote. Her letters were a wonderful reminder of the bond we share. And when I get those loner tendencies, when I feel the foolish need to disappear and get the crazy idea that it would be better for everyone if I did, I feel that bond pulling me back, and I know she would hit me if she were there. When the worries of the world come crashing down around my best friend, I am right there to move away the rubble and rebuild the house of cards we all live in (because she can't really build card houses, no patience). She has grown into a strong and capable woman; though try to make her believe that! She is a wonderful mother, caring for her children above all things. She is strong willed and stubborn, but she is also kind and caring to a fault. She is willing to work hard to get the job done, but she can just as easily sit down and relax and read a good book or chat with friends. Her beauty is greater even than her absolute denial of that beauty. She is a smile when you don’t feel like smiling, a laugh when you want to cry, a conscience when you feel evil, and a compass when you’ve lost your path. She is many more things as well; I could write for days and not cover the depth that she hides behind those eyes. I am thankful to her, and I am thankful for her, because there is no other person I would rather have to remind me of exactly who I am, because she knows me better than I know myself, and that is why she is my best friend for life. Because I could go a lifetime and never find another like her.