A story of Best Friends

I find it truly amazing, mind boggling, fantastical, wonderful and awesome that my best friend can live 5000 kilometers away from me and we've never physically met. Especially since I once thought that having any kind of relationship, platonic or otherwise, over the internet was total bunk. I seem to have been proven utterly wrong.

I do find it sad and frustrating though that we cant go to movies or spas or give each other make overs or go to pubs or the mall together (even though I hate malls). Though knowing us we'd probably just hit all the book stores and go home and read and listen to cheesy/awesome nerd music, or watch movies we should have grown out of when we were teenagers.  Or whatever. Because it doesn't even matter, because it would just be awesome.

Things are way better, way more awesome now then they were when I was a teenager, and had a 'best friend' I wasn’t really able to connect with once we became teenagers ever. She was ditching me every weekend once we got into high school to drink and smoke and ask me to cover for her if her parents called, or cover for one of her friends that I would never have met before if her parents called and “not to worry about not going to the parties” because I “wouldn’t like it anyway”, “Its not a big deal”. Like I somehow enjoyed sitting around all weekend, friendless, with nothing to do (though I did always manage to entertain myself, books video games, the internet and a good imagination can do wonders, I was almost never bored, but frequently quite lonely). It was like she thought I sat waiting on tenterhooks for her stories of the fantastic weekend adventures, of the parties and the guys and the booze and the drugs, of all the fun I wasn’t ever invited to because “its no big deal, they're no fun and you wouldn’t like it anyway.” “Don’t worry about it.” And worst of all “Maybe next week”.

Either she didn't realize that she was pretty much my only friend from the time we were little kids, or didn't care. Occasionally she’d say it was for my own good or that I was too innocent and shouldn’t be exposed to the parties or some kind of bullcrap like that or that there wasn’t a party next week anyway (to immediately get up and leave on Friday or Saturday to attend the non-existent party)*.

But now, with a best friend 5000 kilometers away that I’ve never actually met, things feel so much better, inexpressibly better. It’s so much realer than it did when my ‘best friend’ lived next door. Like I can be my weird self and she can be herself and that’s totally cool because we wouldn’t even have met if we were both ourselves anyway. I’m sure things would be just as totally awesome if we lived next door too, because if we did I don’t think there would be much ditching for boys or booze or drugs or indefinite, never fulfilled promises of “maybe next week”.

Maybe I’m just living in a dream because it has been painfully long since I’ve been able to say I have a best friend, but I really think right now is the absolute best ever, only to be topped by any time we might get to meet.




*I should mention though, that despite all the boys, drugs and booze, she was neither a slut (despite some rumors) nor an addict, and I personally knew at least one of both categories to be able to safely tell the difference.