Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.

It's the time we tried to make chocolate covered bananas with regular chocolate syrup. Going to California with our class and experiencing the ocean together for the first time.It's her being in Baltimore for a week and a half in high school, seeing all the sights, and getting agitated because we were/are so similar to each other.

It's driving to California and her getting pulled over in the same place I did a year later, in my car. Driving off just to nearly stall the car as we are pulling away. It's road trips and first drinks. Getting lost in random places. Driving the wrong way on one way streets.

She's always been there for me. Even when actual communication is scarce, we have always being able to pick up the relationship as if no time has passed.

It's driving 6 hours to be a distraction while I was taking care of my dad. Going to Albuequerque just to go out. Going to a crazy music festival in the middle of the desert because we didn't believe that such a thing actually existed...it does

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

~ Walter Winchell

It's flying back to Maryland a few days after I got home, after my dad died. Being patient with me as I processed the loss of a man I didn't like until three weeks before he died. It's laughing over the morbid thought of how my dad's ashes looked like cat litter. I know, really morbid

It's laughing over trying to teach her how to drive stick shift, giving up after many sudden stops and stalls, deciding I would drive. Aggrivating a middle eastern man at dunkin donuts, because we didn't know what we wanted to order, to the point that he says 'you place your order now.' It's going to NYC together as adults because the trip never happened in high school. Her being understanding as I did the disobedient act of spreading most of his ashes in the hudson, on the fairy, on the way to the statue of liberty.

For all the things I've done, I've had one person by my side since I was 9 years old. In the 6th grade we both left our elementary school. Our relationship must have been god ordained because we ended up at the same middle school without any planning. My dearest friend has been there through all these adventures...and soooo many more neither of us remember, or will admit in court. We have listened to each others secrets, trusted each other with our deepest self, been each others family when each of ours were not enough.

I think of MY Jessica and I'm so grateful we found each other on the playground in 3rd grade. Our memories are precious. We've helped shape each other into the adults we are today. I'm so excited to see how the rest of our lives unfold. I don't know that we are going to live in the same place again. I hope so, but it doesn't matter either, because miles do not separate us. I know we will be old women continuing to talk about our memories, and the many more that we will create, as we sit on a porch somewhere in rocking chairs, drinking margueritas because that's the only thing both of us likes. I love you Jess.

A good friend asks to have a drink...
A true friend takes one...

A good friend expects you to always be there for them...
A true friend expects to always be there for you...

A good friend wonders about your romantic history...
A true friend can blackmail you with it...

A good friend hates it when you call late at night...
A true friend asks why you took so long...

Boxes

When I was a child I knew no bounds

There were no limits to where I could fly

The sky was full of dreams to be lived

And lessons to be learned.

When I was a child

I wanted to be an artist, a rock star, a violinist, and an astronaut.

When I was a child

I thought I could be anything.

 Through the struggles of growing up

Lack of structure

Lack of molding,

My childhood dreams kept me     

                                                        afloat.

 I miss seeing the world as I did as a child.

Where challenges were hurdles, instead of brick walls.

And fears were meant to be overcome,

Not something that boxes you in.

     My happiest memories were when I attended a small charter school. Everyone was the same kind of ‘different’ so no one was singled out. All the bullying and family struggles stayed outside those walls. Friendships were built, trust was made, secrets told. I never wanted to go home but this was the first time that I actually wanted to stay at school. I didn’t call out sick; I would try and hide being sick if I were at school already.

     In the 8^th grade the 7^th/8^th grade class went on a weeklong trip to San Diego, CA. It was a week away from my parents, spending the time with friends, being free. The trip was educational, for sure. The best part of it though was seeing a world bigger than my own. To put my feet in the ocean for the first time and really comprehend that I am not alone. There is so much life to be lived. 

My dad

         I have one memory of my father. It was at my sister’s ninth birthday party. It was held at an old roller-skating rink with dingy eggshell-white brick walls; the kind of place where the whole building reeks of old roller-skates worn too many times by people that probably have foot fungus. I was wearing a red onesie, with untamable, curly-short hair. When he came in I was on one side of the hallway and he was on the other. I saw him and I went running towards him screaming,” Daddy!” He must have been running also, because I didn’t have to run very far before he scooped me up into his arms.

Someone took a picture at that point; I know because I’ve seen it hidden in boxes I wasn’t supposed to see. I knew no hurt then, only love and I loved my father so very much. By now the image has faded some in my mind’s eye, but his smile and the love I felt is still very clear and vivid. I guess, maybe, that’s why it hurts so much, because I knew his love. Now there’s this hole in my heart where his love and his presence should be. Time will never heal that wound

         My dad died a short time later and I spent most of my childhood and early twenties angry at my dad. But, I’ve grown up a lot since then and I’m no longer angry with my father. I just feel this immense sadness when I think he felt he had to die. My uncle took me to my dad’s gravesite, for the first time in 2004. It was awkward because my dad doesn’t have a gravestone, you know? He really amounted to nothing, even in death; his life has amounted to a grave without his name. I wonder how deep of a depression he had to have been in, how alone and forsaken he had to feel to think he had no one to turn to. Most suicide attempts say they felt the deep longing to live immediately after they take those pills, kick over the chair, or jump off that bridge. It’s sad to think my father also felt the longing to live in his final moments of life. His death has left so many “what ifs?”

         Realizing I am not like my father, that my family does not see me as a failure has taken time, tears, and many falls. It’s in getting up from the fall and persevering that separates me from my father. Having and seeing in my family the emptiness my dad has left behind is all I’ll ever need to have the determination to keep going. I’ve learned to be grateful to my father for giving me life and I’m going to live. Because of my father I am both broken and whole. I’m caring and understanding of other’s plights, but above all else, I’m fiercely driven to make a difference, to leave something more than pictures and broken hearts behind.