Why do all of my best friends move away?
I feel like a little girl again, saying goodbye to Leslie, Katie, Andrea, Morgan, Destiny...all wrapped up into one.
Like I'll never see her again.
She already lives 2 hours away, and it's hard enough to see each other. 8 hours? It might happen once every few years.
She has 3 boys, 8 and under. She's beautiful. She's more awkward and accident-prone than I am. She likes to drive fast, she can fix a tractor, she does Zumba and makes fun of herself for it, she burns everything she bakes, she can make the best mashed potatoes in the world, she can't grow a flower to save her life. She was there with me when we were 13 and I called her at 5 a.m. on a school day and asked her to come over because my parents were fighting again. We got in so much trouble the summer before she moved that we weren't allowed to even talk on the phone to each other. We've been sunburned together, we've baked cookies and drank coffee in the middle of the night, we've liked the same boys and fought over shoes.
We used to go to her house and drink chocolate milk and eat popcorn after school. We used to sneak out our bedroom windows and climb the sand rocks at midnight, and she always stood too close to the edge. She taught me to drive a 4-wheeler, but bailed off the back right before I crashed into a hay stack.
She was there, holding one hand while my husband held the other, the days both of my children were born, even though I never made it to the hospital for her, even when they thought she had cancer.
We haven't lived closer than an hour's drive apart in 12 years, we didn't speak for a couple of years, we didn't go to each other's weddings.
She is everything I always wish I could be; brave, good with numbers, ambitious, and so much more.
And I know it isn't like we won't call each other still. But if I think I miss her now, when I see her a few times a year, it's going to be worse.
And I'm sad.