my best friend emily

consider yourself warned! this is going to be a very long post, and i'm sure it will only be a post important to me. if you're the type to lose interest easily i would probably suggest stopping here. this is a post for electronic preservation of a very important piece of paper i just found that i never want to lose.

for those of you still reading, i will give you a quick update. i have a very best friend. her name is emily. we met in jr. high in 1993. we were the best of friends through high school and college. the friendship still exists, but distance changed it when i moved here in 1999 and she currently lives in egypt. however, distance and time has proved to not change what we had; it's still there just not in the same form as when we were together at all times. yesterday i found this document i wrote within days of moving here. it was a painful decision to leave, but ultimately i think it gave us both the life we were intended for. re-reading this certainly brought back the heartache i felt when i left home. read on if you feel so inclined.

"i've only seen her cry 3 times in five years. it has only been about her parents. she's too strong for tears. she's crying now. i can't imagine what i've done. i didn't know my decision to move would affect her like this. she was laying on my bed on top of my pink comforter- the one i chose as my college comforter. i was in the pink chair she was loaning me; my legs were crossed, and i was clenching the matching pink pillow. the only light in the room was from the 3-bulb lamp behind me. it was appropriate that the lighting was dim; it wasn't exactly the brightest point in our relationship. with tears streaming down her face i heard her explaining how she was going to be so alone without me; we had spent the last 6 years mostly focusing on each other. for the 1st time she admitted that she needed someone, and i was that person. as i began listening, i heard what she was really saying.
we were losing our two-story college duplex on 1916 Cherokee Lane. It meant that i would never be waiting for her at our kitchen table at 1:00 on monday, wednesday, and friday after class so we could have cheese tortillas or turkey sandwiches. it meant that our evening walks on campus would end; how could we ever talk about our weight and eating habits again without those walks? it meant i wouldn't be borrowing her green stretch shirt from banana republic, and she would never borrow my brown sweater with the cream stripe from american eagle. we would never use my stereo to blast george strait and patsy cline so we could have a concert in any part of the house. there would be no more late night runs to taco bell for bean burritos; no other taco bell would know it was normal for me to order a bag of fire sauce, and she couldn't explain to other taco bells why her best friend ordered bags of fire sauce. they wouldn't care. we would never run to the window together again when we heard our hot mailman come to our door. there would be no more random times to ride the West Coast Bad Boyz bus together. i can't wake her up at 1:00 am to go to pratts because i was craving fat free cool whip with butterfinger bbs. there won't be anymore reasons to plan for building fountains in our backyard and flower boxes for our windows. i wouldn't be able to sleep with her 5 nights a week in her wooden antique bed because we won't be falling asleep watching french kiss, dirty dancing, or indecent proposal. how would we have cheeseless pizza with jalepenos and pineapples from papa johns on our study night during finals week? i won't be able to run upstairs in the evening when i get home and be so loud so i can hopefully wake her up from her nap just because i'm dying to talk to her. there will be no more preparations for our rare saturday morning sausage and biscuit breakfast. i won't be able to stay up until 4:30 am on a school night talking and developing our own philosophies on life; at least we had the the epiphany that life is just vicious cycle before i left. we won't have to worry about calling our neighbor to try to catch our mouse in the storage closet; the mouse can stay there as a reminder of us.
i was crying, too. i couldn't distinguish between the sad tears and the tears that came out of happiness and relief. the tears were sad because i know we are sacrificing our joys together at cherokee lane. the tears were happy because i knew in that moment that our friendship was rare. not everyone gets the privilege of feeling this way about a friend. nor do they get these experiences. i have it, and will be able to take the emotion and memory with me wherever i go."