Lessons From My Best Friend

Yep. I fell in love with my best friend. *FAT EYE ROLL* Here's the story.

In high school, I can’t lie - social pressures got the best of me. I took on many different personas and had the imagination of a little kid. There was only one point when I felt like my true self, and that was in the company of my best group of friends. This group of friends consisted of 3 boys and 1 other girl. Sure, the ratio was off, but this friend group wasn’t like that. These were some of the truest friends I would ever know and loving them was so easy, but there was one friend in particular that I felt beyond connected to.

He was so special to me and still is. He was like a big brother, dad, role model and I don’t know how I landed a friend like him. In retrospect, I had the FATTEST crush on this kid coming into high school, so becoming his friend was just so confusing.  I could do some of the dumbest things on this planet and he would be right there to tell me how stupid it was, but he’d never walk away. Throughout our friendship we would always hear people say, “Ohhhhhhh you guys are going to end up together,” or “When’s the wedding??????????” This. Got. OLD. I never looked at him as anything more than a friend, and neither did he.

This brings me back to my point about social pressures. I heard those words enough to the point where my imagination started to run wild. What if we did end up together? What would it be like? Would it ruin our friendship? Is everybody right? I couldn’t help but think about all these questions, all the time, and then it began to consume me. I mean it made sense, right? I found him so attractive anyway. He has the best face and he's all into activism and philanthropy. He was perfect. It seemed far fetched for someone like me to end up with someone like him, but for a while, it was the only thing I thought about. The fantasy of ending up with your best friend seemed like the fairy tale I needed in my life. I mean, he was there through all the toughest stuff in my life and there wasn’t anything in this world I wouldn’t do for him. He had my heart, even when it wasn’t romantic.

There came a point when I couldn’t take feeling like this anymore and I had to act on it. I took a very long trip with our other best friend to surprise him and tell him how I felt. With a car ride full of our favorite songs to help ease the anticipation and nervous pains forming in my stomach, we took the ride. It was just a weekend trip and I knew I had a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it. I was risking a lot in doing this and I didn’t think about this going a different way than in my favor. Long story short, he ended up finding out how I felt through the way I was acting (because he knows me probably better than anyone on this planet) and the trip DEFINITELY ended on a bad note.

 I was not prepared to hear that he would never having feelings for me in a way other than a friendship and it hit me very hard. For a while, that act of me going out of my way and putting my heart completely on the line did exactly what I thought it would never do. The friendship, the person, I would confide in about absolutely everything was even further away from me than he already was. I was devastated.

Eventually, I had to accept it because his happiness and his friendship means more to me than any heartbreak I would endure. I learned a lot from this. I learned that some people are just meant to be your friends and he the kind that is the most solid one. Rebuilding our friendship wasn’t hard when I learned to accept this, although the physical distance between us isn’t ideal. He is still my heart and loving him is still one of the greatest feelings because I know he’s real.

To you:

There is nothing in this world that I wouldn’t do to you and it is the biggest blessing that you are still in my life. You are my best friend before anything else. Thank you for always showing me the light in the hardest situations and lifting me up when I fall, because I know that sometimes I fall HARD.

“You see the best of me, and you’re making me believe that I’m somebody special. That I don’t have to settle – not for nobody… You got me thinking maybe, I got potential to be somebody special.” – Somebody Special by Nina Nesbitt