Let me tell you about my best friend.

First, let's talk about what a best friend is.  I think this term is overused far too frequently.  Often times, people meet a new friend and instantly have a bond and find so much happiness in this newly found friendship and immediately declare that this is their 'best friend'.  Other times people, when asked who their best friend is, lists off, like, five or six people.  Well, that is just breaking the rules.  More often, people who are in relationships or marriages claim that their significant other is their best friend.  Well, that is just a cop out and total bullshit.  And here is why:

1. A 'best friend' is singular.  You can only have one.  Not five or six - or even two.  
2. A 'best friend' implies, the one friend, over all of the rest - that is the best.  (See point one)
3. A best friend, in my case (and I feel, should be the same in all other cases), is someone who knows every bit of you - all of the bullshit that you own - and loves you anyway.  This is called unconditional love - much like a family member (or how family should be, anyway).
4. A best friend does not count as your boyfriend or partner - or whatever because I know (we all know) that there is simply things that you do not tell your partner (like when they are really pissing you off.  Or that the guy that waited on you at that one restaurant was super hot and you would totally sleep with him - if you weren't already attached. You know shit that you tell your best friend.)

Now that that is all squared away, I will introduce you to my best friend.  Her name is Katy.  I met Katy in 1996.  I was fifteen years old and Katy was fourteen years old.  We were on the school bus and I approached her because I really liked the shirt and rings that she was wearing.  There was an immediate connection despite the fact that, from the outside, we appeared to be so very totally mismatched.  But our insides, oh our insides....-well, they were a perfect fit.

Katy was into, what we would have labeled in the '90's as, punk, goth, and folk music.  And she dressed as those three combined.  She loved photography, witchcraft, writing poetry, and listening to music.  I, on the other hand, was - for the most part - popular (not in an arrogant way, I just was a social butterfly, and had many friends), loved name brand clothes (who am I kidding, I still do), and the only punk music I had really listened to was NoFX, Pennywise, and some 'punk' music that my boyfriend played out of his basement in Granger (you can see how punk this music really was not) -  I did, however, enjoy writing poetry and I loved being photographed.  These were the two thing we instantly bonded over.  Katy took pictures and I was in them.  Afterward, we would write our poetry and share it with each other.  With our hangouts ebbing and flowing throughout high school, we were still good friends and close (I have the year book signings to prove it).

I must add, before I move on, that by this time, our families had realized that Katy's mother and my father grew up together.  Such a small world.  Also, Katy's mother and my mother became 'best friends'.  It seemed, at this point, we always had either Katy over or Tina over.  We had already began to become family.

After high school we began to hang out even more.  Katy started dating some douchebag and I dated another.  We all thought it to be a brilliant idea to live together.  So we did.

After those relationships crashed and burned (as they all do, or should do at 19) Katy and I had a brief moment of living separately, then eventually moved back in together again.  At this point we are 20/21 years old.  If I had to pinpoint it, exactly, this is when I believe Katy and I became true - genuine best friends.

Our 20's were the best!  We did everything together.  Essentially (as I stated in her wedding toast), we were everything for each other.  Because of this, our families got to know each other even better and our parents treated us both as their daughters.  Her siblings became my siblings and mine became hers.  We dated boys that were friends and we created a little family of friends that we just adored.  Like I said, we had a blast (I won't go into the gory details of all of the drugs, sex, and rock and roll, but -oops......).  Nonetheless, you get the point.

Katy and I both got married, to 'best friends', actually.  My husband and I were Katy's best man and maid of honor and they were ours.  You would want to puke it seemed so picture perfect.  Before Katy even got married she had told her husband that if he is marrying her, then he is marrying me - and he knew it and agreed.

Katy and I talk, even today, about being soul mates.  We could go through the definition of what a 'soul mate' is and if it even exists, but for sake of argument, I am just going to assume we all know what it is and agree that it is real.  Because if it exists, Katy and I are that to each other.

We have seen each other through marriages, deaths, divorces, family problems, pregnancies, friend problems, affairs, illnesses, diseases, disagreements of our own, and the death of my (essentially, our) child.  She has never wavered in her love and loyalty to me.  Aside from my family, I can wholeheartedly say that I have never had anyone love me that much, not even my (ex)husband.

Katy and I share a lot of similarities (who doesn't when they spend 15 years together), but we are very different, too.  The differences are good - we balance each other out. In jest, I am the devil and she is an angel (if only I could insert a smiley face here).  Like I said, we're the perfect fit.  

I have done things in my life that I am not proud of.  No matter how much Katy disagreed with the things that I had done, she still stood beside me.  I have lost my very own son and she still grieves with me.  I can only hope that I have returned all of the compassion, loyalty, and love that she has shown me.

Now that... - that is a best friend.