A dude is my best friend.....

And I am so about to embarrass him too.

It began about 16 or so years ago (great. now i feel old). We were 13. Even though he couldn't be bothered with being my friend at the very exclusive, very snooty private school we both attended, we still knew each other. His mom loves telling me how I hung out with her at his birthday party. I hated everyone back then and they hated me, so it was equal-opportunity hatred.

Anyway, the following year I went back to my ghettofied public school. And as I trudged along with the other 8th graders down the hall I saw something that made me panic. I thought I was crazy. Losing my mind. Only I wasn't and he was really there. He was not a hallucination. WTF was he doing at a public CITY school?!

So began the weirdest friendship I think would ever be known to man. Okay, okay. So I was like totally in love with him for years. I made an ass of myself time and time again at his expense. I even crushed on a few of his friends when I got bored trying to get him to like me. His mom made him go off to military school and I am not sure of the particulars of that. Then his friends had to go to military school too. Yes, really. I actually know someone whose parent sent them away to military school for behavior unbecoming. We wrote letters. Okay, I wrote "novels" as he called them. He wrote me one sentence on a piece of paper. When he was allowed home for a weekend, we'd chat on the phone or he'd steal his mom's car to come sit in my front yard. Good times. I still crushed on him, even though he got really insane for a while. I guess military school will do that.

(Side note: I wasn't always waiting for him though and I did date other guys.)

Then college happened and oh gawd, we got even weirder. I happily moved on without him, finally getting over the whole "ilovehimsomuchiwanttomarryhimsomedayohmygawd" thing. Well....kind of. At the very least, I gave up on the idea of him ever loving me.

Random thought: I do think when you really love someone, you always love them.

I dated a lot of guys in college and I even fell in love with one of them. Well, as much as you can fall in love with some random dude you talk to on the internet and never meet. I digress. Still, there was my Dude, always in the background.

We did try each other on, so to speak, at one point but we quickly moved away from that. Didn't talk for a while either. Still don't know what happened there. Something about he had a girlfriend and yeah...

In the end, we did start talking again. When we did, one thing was very clear. I loved him very deeply. He loved me, finally. And then I got married and had kids. And he's still there, my best friend, my sounding board, the brakes on my crazy train. He just knows me in a way no one else does. He's my best friend and I honestly don't know what I would do without him. We grew up together. And he tells it to me like it is...even if it means hurting my feelings.

I wanted him to love me all those years ago. I always thought I wanted to marry him. What I got was something much better than that.

He is my best friend in the whole wide world. He is the carrots to my peas. The Forrest to my Jenny. The peanut butter to my jelly....well, you get the point.

I am so thankful I have a friend like him.