Isn’t it funny how a ten-year old’s heart can know the instant it found one of its soul mates? You ignited something in my life the day we met that has never died out. To this day I still can’t quite place my finger on it, but if I was forced to identify what it was, I would say it’s the first time I loved someone so wholeheartedly and so instinctively outside of my own family.
My loyalty will always remain with you. Remember that secret I told you, before you got married? The one that I held on to with a deep burden of pain for years? Remember how you responded? With grace. You responded with grace, like you have every single day of our friendship for the last eighteen plus years. Remember how when we were thirteen and your mom (love you, Kenny) said you couldn’t hang out with me anymore? Remember how you responded? With grace towards your parents and with love towards me. You loved me and stood by me through my lowest and most unforgiving of moments back then, and you haven't stopped since.
It's a well-known fact that my feet wouldn't be upright on this earth and my heart wouldn't be beating it's wild, intense beat these days if it weren't for you. You've saved me from myself (and I don't just mean from running into ponds in the middle of the night) so many times before and even as we grow into adults (or wait, are we already adults? is the whole 'growing into adults' part behind us? oh lord.), you continue to save me. Oftentimes mostly from myself, yet again.
You know the inner workings of my brain almost better than I do. You don't let the laziness that rests inside of me ever win. You don't let the demons that circle around my heart ever get a full grasp of my soul anymore these days, you don't let the doubts and fears that permeate my mind ever speak more loudly than the truth. You create space for me to breathe, heal, thrive, live. Without you, I don't think many of the pleasant feelings that fill my belly on a sunshiney day would be there.
You've taught me the value of true friendship and relationship in the way that only two decades worth of love and commitment can. I know no friend, no sister, no human being more loyal or true than you and the way my heart falls in line alongside yours to the step of our friendship and sisterhood makes me feel like the luckiest ten (or twenty-eight) year old in the world.
You’ve been my family since that rainy November day we met and to now raise our own little families beside each other is the purest form of God’s magic, love, humor, and faith. How lucky are we to feel it poured over us in such a way every single day?
I love you with every single broken, healing, and healed fiber in my being. My gratitude and love for you knows no bounds and I’ll spend every day I’m lucky enough to open my eyes on this earth thanking the God we love for you.
Thank you and I love you, Bizzy.