somebody sedate me, christy is 24!

As deranged and silly as it sounds, I write this with the intention of making someone cry. Whether it be me or you—that’s still to be determined. But one thing is for certain: there will be tears.

Because how can you know someone for almost twenty years and not feel the weight of their presence—their wins and losses, their love and hurt?

Christy has been that emotional anchor for me since I was five years old, and today happens to be her birthday. 

It’s hard to adequately sum up what her friendship has meant to me throughout all these years, but I want to try.

There was never a pinpoint moment where we met. It’s like she spawned into my life and became a constant I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried (and I tried pretty hard in fifth grade). We were girls together before questionable friendships, before dipshit boyfriends with hummingbird tattoos, before loss and heartbreak, and before we knew what it meant to grow up and become adults side by side.

The Christy I will forever see in my head looks like this: a leopard-print jacket, pink plaid shorts, Dora-the-Explorer bangs, and a big, toothy grin that was contagious. We’ll be ninety years old one day, and she’ll forever be immortalized in my mind that way. She was a swimmer, a gamer, a runner, a dog-walker, and a troublemaker. 

When I was eight years old and still believed fairies existed—even though she didn’t—she wasn’t the girl who made fun of me or spoiled the fun. She was the one who gave me space to keep dreaming. Who maybe encouraged slight mental illness, but ultimately gave me the freedom to be whoever I wanted to be.

How rare is that in a youthful friendship, where children are typically cruel and insecure? And how lucky am I to have found such graciousness at a young age?

She lived up the street from me, and every day after school we’d play at the park, swim in her pool, skateboard down the concrete hill in our neighborhood, or talk to the limo driver who lived on the street below us—who, in hindsight, was actually super creepy. We had the stomach flu together on the last day of third grade. We got in trouble at lunch in middle school and during English class because we were menaces. What true friendship doesn’t have those kind of shenanigans?

In the summer of 2015, she moved to Texas, and I remember being shattered. How was I supposed to start high school without a best friend? Everyone seemed to have that connection going in, and we were both stripped of it. I remember the first week of freshman year, walking behind a group of girls who were talking about me as I went the same direction, and thinking, If Christy were here, I’d have a defender—or at least someone who’d give me the strength to stick up for myself.

It was lonely for me. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like for her.

The first time I saw her after the move was spring break of 2016, and every fear I’d had about an indifferent, weathered version of our friendship faded into irrelevance. Nothing could split us up.

My sophomore year of high school, I got my first boyfriend. At the time, he was funny and cute and charming in the very specific way teenage boys are. There were endless Skype calls and text messages about it. I could probably dig through the cloud and find the evidence if I felt like gagging—which I don’t—but it’s nice knowing that version of us still exists somewhere.

Looking back now—at a Skylar who was still figuring out friendships, whose parents were crumbling before her very eyes, and who hid in her room trying to preserve whatever light still existed in her childhood home—I think Christy knew that boy wasn’t it.

She has a tendency to recognize these things long before I do. But she never forces that knowledge onto me. She never destroys what I believe to be sacred. She lets me figure it out on my own—even if it takes me years.

And when I do, she sits muted on FaceTime in the pocket of my overalls while I break up with the jerk.

She’s the friend I’m a complete and total idiot with. The friend I’m never afraid to embarrass myself in front of, because chances are she’s being stupid right alongside me. She’s seen every version of me and somehow, through all of them, still loves me—not because she has to, but because she chooses to.

I used to tell Garrison that I thought soulmates are romantic, and I’d nag him about whether or not he thought we were soulmates. He’d always say he didn’t know if he believed in that idea. At first, I was crushed. What do you mean you don’t think we’re soulmates?! (To clarify, he didn’t say those EXACT words, but I pick and choose what I hear sometimes)

But he told me it’s infinitely more romantic to choose to love someone every day than to have fate mash two people together.

As much as I believe in soulmates (romantic & and platonic) I think— like relationships— choosing your best friend to stick by is infinitely better than some sort of fate mashing two people up randomly for the sake of calling them twin flames.

There’s no destiny throwing us at each other like paint splattered on a wall. It’s seeing the vision of art and choosing to create it.

That’s us. For realllllll.

Christy’s the one who talks me off every ledge I want to fling myself off of. The one who holds me back from throwing a punch—but later admits she kind of wishes she’d let me do it just to see what would’ve happened. The one who giggles with me, drunk or sober. The one who will beat a dead horse with me on topics long since retired but somehow always resurface.

She went from the girl up the street I played with on the playground to the girl who sends me pictures of herself holding up a pound of meth from a drug bust she worked. And in both phases of life, she remained loyal, fierce, and hilarious.

There are some friends you simply aren’t complete without. It isn’t codependency or conformity—how could it be, when we live thousands of miles apart? It’s something real and rare. A friendship that withstands time.

And that’s Christy.

That’s us.

And that’s who we’ll be for the rest of our lives.

I was feeling really sappy this week, and Christy is also one of my favorite people to talk about because she’s literally so cool, and she deserves to have a place on the blog forever because she’s the poster child for being the perfect friend.

Anyways, happy birthday MG <333 (I always wonder what people think that nickname means, but I think that knowledge should remain just for us). 

I love you forever & ever shawty.