I miss you. I am so happy that you are doing well and having fun in college and making so many new friends, but I still miss seeing you every day. After high school, it seemed like everyone went off in different directions. Friend-groups dissolved, and people that once seemed inseparable don’t even associate with each other anymore. I don’t mind that I am only still in contact with a handful of people that I graduated with, since it must mean that we were the ones that were meant to be friends. You have made an undeniable impact on my life, and I owe a lot to you.

Thank you for being my friend in the first place. Thank you for sitting next to me in class, and talking to me even though I looked like I got dressed in the dark (which I probably did). Thank you for including me in your already-established friend group, and letting me sit at your lunch table. Thank you for supporting me and being my biggest fan, whether that meant coming to my basketball games or joining my Relay for Life team. You knew me at my most awkward and terrible, throughout my whole middle school career that I desperately try to block from my memory. You were my friend the entire time I had braces (all four years, right up through senior portraits). You wrote paragraphs in my yearbook, and sometimes even signed it twice. You roomed with me on our Senior Class Trip, and together we got everyone else in our class to hate us just in time for graduation. Thank you for helping me with the transition from high school to college, and giving me a play-by-play of everything that happened during freshman orientation. Thank you for being my partner in crime, for encouraging me to get out of my comfort zone and helping me to feel more confident. Even when I felt the most alone and confused in high school, I was always comforted by the fact that I had at least one friend: you.

I never feel like we talk enough. I’m sorry for not texting you more, but I hope you know that that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about you. I talk about you all the time, and my friends at college know all of our craziest stories, from hiking on an ice mountain to sunrise kayaking. I love when we do finally get to catch up, because it always picks up where we left off. As hard as it is to leave college, I always look forward to the breaks because going home means we finally get to hang out. I love our group chats and how we always have something new to tell each other. I really appreciate our phone conversations, and how you always listen quietly when I need to rant about people you’ve never even met. I hope that you can visit soon, because I know you’d love to see how many pictures of us are on my dorm room wall. I’d love to visit your school soon too, so that I could put faces to the names of your college friends.

When I think of high school, I don’t think of failing my Chemistry midterm or falling down the stairs in front of my Math teacher. My memories are of all the laughs we shared and great times that we had. Going to college was great for both of us; it allowed us to grow and really become ourselves. I know college changed me, and that I came back home listening to country music and talking about how amazing Stewart’s is. Even though leaving home made us different, I feel like we never stopped knowing each other. My friends from college never knew me as a brace-faced, bright-blue-Converse-wearing little weirdo, but you did. You know the names of my siblings and pets and you know where I live (which is why I can never get on your bad side). The fact that we are still best friends now is how I know that we will always be the Wolf Pack, the G00n $quad, and whatever else we decide to call ourselves. Thank you for everything, I'm so lucky to have you in my life.

P.S. get the new iPhone update so I can text you "middle finger" emojis.