The Heart-Safe
Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 - Your first love
Day 03 - Your parents
Day 04 - What you ate today
Day 05 - Your definition of love
Day 06 - Your day
Day 07 - Your best friend
Day 08 - A moment
Day 09 - Your beliefs
Day 10 - What you wore today
Day 11 - Your siblings
Day 12 - What’s in your bag
Day 13 - This week
Day 14 - What you wore today
Day 15 - Your dreams
Day 16 - Your first kiss
Day 17 - Your favorite memory
Day 18 - Your favorite birthday
Day 19 - Something you regret
Day 20 - This month
Day 21 - Another moment
Day 22 - Something that upsets you
Day 23 - Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 - Something that makes you cry
Day 25 - A first
Day 26 - Your fears
Day 27 - Your favorite place
Day 28 - Something that you miss
Day 29 - Your aspirations
Day 30 - One last moment
Today, I get to tell you about the very best person I have ever known.
Megs (or Buns, or Spoony, but really only to me; perhaps lotrwariorgodss to some of you) is my best friend.
We went to high school together and knew of each other the first couple years. We began to bond in junior year, shared a summer trip in western Europe, and enjoyed one another's company in senior year. In a graduating class of only 26 people, it's hard not to know everyone, or spend your time with them, whether you mean to or not. We were friends, but nothing particularly amazing.
College started and I was supposed to go to a school an hour and a half away but ended up getting pretty sick. I came back, stayed home. Sometimes, I'd hang out with Megan. It was fun times when I did and, when I switched to ASU, I was glad to know someone there and have someone to hang out with when there was time. But then, living just a couple hallways down from one another, we ended up spending more and more time together, and escaped both our awkward roommates to hang out with one another. We got to know one another's interests more and, as we learned about ourselves and grew, so did our friendship, with all the things we concerned ourselves about starting to overlap.
Megs talked to me about knives and priests and horrific diseases and Harry Potter while I talked to her about slash and Queer as Folk and tea and scary video games. We got along so well and spent so much time together that we might as well have been roommates at that point. And, as summer approached, we decided we would be the next year. We moved into the dorms together the next year and it was a perfect match. We continued to bond over our weirdest sides of ourselves: our love for graveyards, our love for long road trips, our love for questionable music.
As the next year approached, we decided to get an apartment off campus because it'd be cheaper and give us more space and freedom. We moved in and once I moved out for a touch to study abroad in a place I hated and she mailed me bits of home so it was like I wasn't gone at all. We spent a lot of time watching movies, and a little time doing homework. We never really argued over much. We lived in The Cave together for another two and a half years until Megs got a position in her dream career field as a neonatal intensive care nurse in Los Angeles.
You know, in the 4 years I lived with her, we never got into a fight. We could get frustrated, sure, but we never had one of those roommate horror stories. Most people say, don't move in with your friends, you'll end up hating them, but if anything, living with Megs made me love her that much more. I took for granted all the time we got to spend together, for sure; to be able to have your best friend there with you all the time is something really special, and, if I'm allowed to regret anything, it's that I didn't vocalize how much she meant to me when she was always there.
She's the person who takes stupid photos with me and has the same thoughts at the same time about how terrifying some well-intended set up might seem. She likes taking detours and exploring roads and reading maps to get to somewhere new and different.
She suffers with me when we freeze on a boat stuck in the middle of the ocean because one of us gets it in our heads that a boat is a very good place to be when it is windy and the other one doesn't object but says maybe we can find whales to watch, too.
She's thoughtful and well-read, and shares her books, and forces her authors onto you at just the right time with the right insistence so that it makes the biggest impact on you. She's pensive, and patient, and kind.
She throws up snow in joy while you're left trying to figure out what to do with the stuff because you're both desert born-and-raised. She has the best giggle, an infectious one, and loves to laugh, and to be light-hearted in a heavy, serious world.
She roams graveyards and picks flowers and brushes off headstones and it seems the most natural place for her to be. She is strong, and level-headed. She is wise.
She is everything you'd ever hope to find in a friend, and then she's better than that. She is the sweetest, most nurturing, most attentive, most honest, most realistic person I know.
All of these things, and all the things I'm thinking and can't figure out how to say, and all the things I want to say but won't, and all the things that exist and I don't think about them belonging in here but they do… all of these things make her the best person I know.
And the next part's maybe lame, but it's honest, and it belongs here, too.
Any good that's ever come from me, I feel like, is a result of knowing her. She taught me to be kinder, more patient, loving. She taught me how to hug and cuddle when before her I'd run from it. She taught me to be a better listener. She taught me to just be myself and like who I am even if I don't like where I came from and I don't know where I'm going. She taught me to give more than I take when I can. She taught me to trust, and be okay with needing a friend. She always showed before she told, was economical with her words, and only interrupts when she knows it's what needs to be done. She's taken every bit of me and shined it up and made it better than she found it, because that's who she is.
When Megs found out that she was leaving, really leaving, it hurt. She moved out of the apartment while I was in Los Angeles for New Years. I came back to an empty apartment, a place half-lived in then, missing all the good half. It was lonely, a kind of lonely I haven't been able to shake since then. And when she actually moved away and didn't come back after a long weekend of preparation, my guts fell out onto the floor, and my heart broke, and nothing felt like it was working right, or like it would ever again.
Jokes about Megs abandoning me or breaking up with me and getting as far as she could were passed around, and sometimes I even made the former to laugh it off. I never did, though. She didn't abandon me, but I still felt alone and given up on. I was without my best friend, and the only person I've ever synced with so completely and perfectly, and loved beyond anyone else. I had lost most of my world. I cried, a lot. I broke down.
I've been rebuilding. I still am. It's still hard. I would never think that 10 months later, I'd still be so easy to cry over it. I can't think of it long, or I'll tear up, like some stupid emotional wreck. And it's stupid, really -- she's just 6 hours away by car, an hour by plane, minutes by phone. But it's not the same. Being able to sit in the same room for 10 hours, not say a word to one another, but be in near-silence and totally comfortable in it, that's the difference. It's that space where the heart's safe.
Megs has always been the secret-keeper. She is the heart-safe.
I know things will change as we get older. We'll move, and we'll fall in and out of love, and we'll do things with our careers, and our hobbies and interests will change, and we'll make new friends, maybe even better friends, and we'll shift and grow, hopefully into greater people than we already are. I can accept all of that. But I know that Megs will always be my friend, if not my very best friend. It's who she is.
Day 02 - Your first love
Day 03 - Your parents
Day 04 - What you ate today
Day 05 - Your definition of love
Day 06 - Your day
Day 07 - Your best friend
Day 08 - A moment
Day 09 - Your beliefs
Day 10 - What you wore today
Day 11 - Your siblings
Day 12 - What’s in your bag
Day 13 - This week
Day 14 - What you wore today
Day 15 - Your dreams
Day 16 - Your first kiss
Day 17 - Your favorite memory
Day 18 - Your favorite birthday
Day 19 - Something you regret
Day 20 - This month
Day 21 - Another moment
Day 22 - Something that upsets you
Day 23 - Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 - Something that makes you cry
Day 25 - A first
Day 26 - Your fears
Day 27 - Your favorite place
Day 28 - Something that you miss
Day 29 - Your aspirations
Day 30 - One last moment
Today, I get to tell you about the very best person I have ever known.
Megs (or Buns, or Spoony, but really only to me; perhaps lotrwariorgodss to some of you) is my best friend.
We went to high school together and knew of each other the first couple years. We began to bond in junior year, shared a summer trip in western Europe, and enjoyed one another's company in senior year. In a graduating class of only 26 people, it's hard not to know everyone, or spend your time with them, whether you mean to or not. We were friends, but nothing particularly amazing.
College started and I was supposed to go to a school an hour and a half away but ended up getting pretty sick. I came back, stayed home. Sometimes, I'd hang out with Megan. It was fun times when I did and, when I switched to ASU, I was glad to know someone there and have someone to hang out with when there was time. But then, living just a couple hallways down from one another, we ended up spending more and more time together, and escaped both our awkward roommates to hang out with one another. We got to know one another's interests more and, as we learned about ourselves and grew, so did our friendship, with all the things we concerned ourselves about starting to overlap.
Megs talked to me about knives and priests and horrific diseases and Harry Potter while I talked to her about slash and Queer as Folk and tea and scary video games. We got along so well and spent so much time together that we might as well have been roommates at that point. And, as summer approached, we decided we would be the next year. We moved into the dorms together the next year and it was a perfect match. We continued to bond over our weirdest sides of ourselves: our love for graveyards, our love for long road trips, our love for questionable music.
As the next year approached, we decided to get an apartment off campus because it'd be cheaper and give us more space and freedom. We moved in and once I moved out for a touch to study abroad in a place I hated and she mailed me bits of home so it was like I wasn't gone at all. We spent a lot of time watching movies, and a little time doing homework. We never really argued over much. We lived in The Cave together for another two and a half years until Megs got a position in her dream career field as a neonatal intensive care nurse in Los Angeles.
You know, in the 4 years I lived with her, we never got into a fight. We could get frustrated, sure, but we never had one of those roommate horror stories. Most people say, don't move in with your friends, you'll end up hating them, but if anything, living with Megs made me love her that much more. I took for granted all the time we got to spend together, for sure; to be able to have your best friend there with you all the time is something really special, and, if I'm allowed to regret anything, it's that I didn't vocalize how much she meant to me when she was always there.
She's the person who takes stupid photos with me and has the same thoughts at the same time about how terrifying some well-intended set up might seem. She likes taking detours and exploring roads and reading maps to get to somewhere new and different.
She suffers with me when we freeze on a boat stuck in the middle of the ocean because one of us gets it in our heads that a boat is a very good place to be when it is windy and the other one doesn't object but says maybe we can find whales to watch, too.
She's thoughtful and well-read, and shares her books, and forces her authors onto you at just the right time with the right insistence so that it makes the biggest impact on you. She's pensive, and patient, and kind.
She throws up snow in joy while you're left trying to figure out what to do with the stuff because you're both desert born-and-raised. She has the best giggle, an infectious one, and loves to laugh, and to be light-hearted in a heavy, serious world.
She roams graveyards and picks flowers and brushes off headstones and it seems the most natural place for her to be. She is strong, and level-headed. She is wise.
She is everything you'd ever hope to find in a friend, and then she's better than that. She is the sweetest, most nurturing, most attentive, most honest, most realistic person I know.
All of these things, and all the things I'm thinking and can't figure out how to say, and all the things I want to say but won't, and all the things that exist and I don't think about them belonging in here but they do… all of these things make her the best person I know.
And the next part's maybe lame, but it's honest, and it belongs here, too.
Any good that's ever come from me, I feel like, is a result of knowing her. She taught me to be kinder, more patient, loving. She taught me how to hug and cuddle when before her I'd run from it. She taught me to be a better listener. She taught me to just be myself and like who I am even if I don't like where I came from and I don't know where I'm going. She taught me to give more than I take when I can. She taught me to trust, and be okay with needing a friend. She always showed before she told, was economical with her words, and only interrupts when she knows it's what needs to be done. She's taken every bit of me and shined it up and made it better than she found it, because that's who she is.
When Megs found out that she was leaving, really leaving, it hurt. She moved out of the apartment while I was in Los Angeles for New Years. I came back to an empty apartment, a place half-lived in then, missing all the good half. It was lonely, a kind of lonely I haven't been able to shake since then. And when she actually moved away and didn't come back after a long weekend of preparation, my guts fell out onto the floor, and my heart broke, and nothing felt like it was working right, or like it would ever again.
Jokes about Megs abandoning me or breaking up with me and getting as far as she could were passed around, and sometimes I even made the former to laugh it off. I never did, though. She didn't abandon me, but I still felt alone and given up on. I was without my best friend, and the only person I've ever synced with so completely and perfectly, and loved beyond anyone else. I had lost most of my world. I cried, a lot. I broke down.
I've been rebuilding. I still am. It's still hard. I would never think that 10 months later, I'd still be so easy to cry over it. I can't think of it long, or I'll tear up, like some stupid emotional wreck. And it's stupid, really -- she's just 6 hours away by car, an hour by plane, minutes by phone. But it's not the same. Being able to sit in the same room for 10 hours, not say a word to one another, but be in near-silence and totally comfortable in it, that's the difference. It's that space where the heart's safe.
Megs has always been the secret-keeper. She is the heart-safe.
I know things will change as we get older. We'll move, and we'll fall in and out of love, and we'll do things with our careers, and our hobbies and interests will change, and we'll make new friends, maybe even better friends, and we'll shift and grow, hopefully into greater people than we already are. I can accept all of that. But I know that Megs will always be my friend, if not my very best friend. It's who she is.