There's This Game I Play In My Head

This is Johanna, you haven't met before. Today, I feel you should. This photo is old-- I think I was seventeen here[?] I lied. I just realized it was a friend's 19th birthday-- I was eighteen, turning nineteen. We met when I was fourteen, in the tenth grade (late birthday, turning fifteen). It's been almost six years. That isn't a long time. No, when you hear about great friendships or best friends, they'll tell you that they've known each other since they were little kids, perhaps their parents even knew eachother, and their grandparents before that-- some people were destined to be friends. Some people were just bound to meet and know each other for ever.

This isn't the case here. It was a random act of chance, we fell into the same groups in high school and became friends. That's all-- no exciting stories here. Here's the story, though: of all the friends I've ever had, of all the people I've ever met, she is the only one, that even after being disconnected through distance and busy lives, still bothers with me. People say that college/university will teach you who your real friends are-- they will say that these are the times when you make your life-long friends. This is true. The transition to university sifted out the friends in my life that were never meant to be, and one made it through. One still calls, and puts up with my license-less ass to pick me up and go out. One still gives a fuck. I take her for granted, and I don't call as often as I should, because I know that regardless of time-- she'll still give a fuck. And I know, I'm a jerk for not putting in my half, but at least I know she'll pull her weight.

This is not to demean my other friends, not for a second, they've all changed my life in different ways. But there's something to be said about a person who puts up with me for all these years, and I can still call one the best friends I've ever had. There's something to be said about a person when I don't need to rehearse the things I say before I say them, when I tell her I need three thousand dollars and she says let's go to an ATM, about a person who will keep me in the loop of her hectic life even when I'm never around. There's something to be said about that kind of a person. But I cannot find those words to say.

I often play a game with myself-- I think about my funeral. Whether it happened tomorrow or sixty years from now. I try to think of the people that I would see being there, the people that would cry, would make a speech, would write a heartfelt letter of sympathy to my family. Every time I play this game, I go through a list of the people in my life-- instantly, she is listed immediately after my family. Every time. Even though there are other friends, other cousins, other people-- she always comes to mind and I don't doubt this. Every time I play this game, she wins.