She is kind. She is passionate. She is caring. She is my better half.

I would say this isn’t a love story about two people who began as friends to slowly grow closer and closer to eventually realize they are in love, but it is exactly that kind of story. The only difference is that the love story does not end in marriage or some tragic falling out; it ends with a friendship so deep that the two friends cannot imagine life without one another.

No, I am not in love with my best friend. Yes, my best friend is the love of my life. But not in a romantic way – in an “I can’t live without you, you’re my one and only and I need you forever” kind of way.

She is everything that I am not: nice, selfless, good with money, strategic, excellent at science, funny, hilariously un-athletic, half Mexican and not confrontational at all. I love her for our differences.

She also brings out the very best in me. She tells me when I am being mean, she lets me know when I need to study, and she cuts me off when I have spent too much money. Not to mention, she is already saving up for the Jeep we are buying when we grow up.

She is everything that I could possibly want and need in a life partner.

Never in a million years would I have envisioned her as being the one. We went to school together and never really talked. She would wear groufits and sweatpants to school while I had my dresses and earrings picked out the night before. She was on the poms team while I was a cheerleader. She had her friends and I had mine.

Then college rolled around and we became sort of friends through a mutual friend. Next thing we know we are roommates and forced to like each other, except nothing was forced at all. We kind of fell like anyone else falls in love – slowly at the beginning and then head-first all at once.

We synchronize dance, we pop back zits, we cry, we eat (a lot), we complain, we nap, we binge watch Netflix, we go on dates – we are one another’s everything.

Honestly, I hope to find a guy someday who makes me feel the way she does.

I am certain I am not the only person who has found love with their best friend. Best friends share this bond that no one else really understands or could even attempt to comprehend. Best friends are our Nemo. If they get lost in the great, big ocean, we find them. You and your best friends are more than friends; you are like a small, powerful gang that takes on the world together, one glass of wine and outfit change at a time.

Your best friend is you; you are your best friend. Together you are unstoppable and apart you are lost. She loves you and you love her, forever and always, ‘til death do you part.