I’d like to take a second to thank an old friend of mine. No, she isn’t anyone you would know. Not really. Not like I do. Only myself and two other women know her, but we could say one for arguments sake: Stephanie Meyer knows her. She created her, wrote her into existence.

But me and her, well, we were close. Thank you for those memories, my friend who isn’t real. But, aren’t those the best kinds? We are so in love with a person, only to realize they aren’t what we expected. The reason for that is we are usually in love with a fictionalized manifestation of an individual that our minds and hearts create.

I fictionalized her. I created myself to be her. I needed her. I created this expression of exactly who I needed to be at the moment I need it most. Her fire, her spark, her sarcasm. Her bravery. And bitterness. Her pain was what I connected to. The others seemed superficial. No, there was more to my friend that was more than a breakup. It was a betrayal. Loneliness. Distance from God.

Her pain was something I understood. And could she have been real, she would relate to me and my pain. I write this again, re-hash it all again because it is now that we are the same age. She was 20. I am 20, and so I feel I understand my best friend even more.

I miss my friend. The one I made up. The girl who knew me. She got me through some of the hardest times in my life. Most of all, I maybe helped her, in some fantasy way. I hope so because she certainly saved me.

I want to thank her for letting me write her, grow up with her, laugh with her, cry with her, be sarcastic with her, love with her, but most of all, heal with her. She became the one thing in my life that helped me the most that brought me comfort. A fictional character that I had everything in common with.

Two sweet years I lived in her fantasy world.

Two sweet years of pain, joy, hate, love, self-loathing and self-acceptance, and I was out of the woods with her by my side.

Eventually, I wrote a book, upon becoming obsessed with a happy ending for her, because that’s all I wanted, a happy ending. Her best friend was the best companion and the best man for her to be with, so it drove me insane it never happened. So I made it happen.

I gave her the best ending ever, and my deep, desperate longing for a happy ending was filled. I wanted someone to save me but since no one was coming I had to do it myself. I saved myself. The cure… was writing so deep in her head that I became her. Her problems became mine, so that when she was sad, so was I. When I was writing her story, it was like she was writing her story. Or that I was writing my own. That’s how deep that connection was.

And an author who can manage to create a character like that deserves a lot, and she’s earned it.

So thank you, both Stephanie Meyer, and most of all the girl that made me who I am, Leah Clearwater.