This is Marlon. He's my best friend, but we're practically brother and sister. We haven't known each other for very long since we only met our freshman year of high school, but our moments together so far have made up for a whole lifetime. We agree on a lot of things, except maybe on the exact moment that we met, (He says we met in honors World History, while I like to think that we met during French 1), and we have a lot of things in common, like being Filipino and the fact that we grew up in predominantly white schools, and that the MCU is the greatest thing to have ever existed.

We were both able to cruise through high school by being joined at the hip, figuratively speaking. I relied on him a lot, both academically and socially. He was almost always my partner for projects in French class and we went to school dances together. We were each other's shoulder to cry on and knew exactly what to do to make the other person laugh until their stomach hurt.

The end of high school and the reality of living away from each other didn't hit me until our high school graduation. As we were taking pictures in our graduation year, a strange thought came across my mind, "We're going to be saying goodbye to the one thing that brought us together, but what if high school was the only reason we stuck together?"

Leaving him behind was hard at first because I was scared. Scared that we were going to drift apart, scared that we were going to change, scared that we couldn't rely on each other anymore. Fortunately, this hasn't been the case.

In the past three or four months, what we thought was the best and greatest friend to ever exist on the face of this planet got even better. I've learned that not being always side by side isn't a bad thing and that not knowing the persons every move is totally fine. In other words, we've made an already healthy relationship into an even healthier one. I think the best part about being apart is the fact that we're both still going through the same changes and experiences, but we get to see our growth as young adults from 2 perspectives. These past four years, our identities have been intertwined and mixed together so much to the point where there wasn't much to our own individual identities that weren't also part of the others.

The main takeaway is that we don't need to be attached at the hip in order to be best friends. Not being there to experience each other's daily lives has made our connection even stronger because we do cherish moments when we are able to get together. Being apart from my best friend has made my faith in our relationship stronger than ever, and I'm confident that we will be in the rest of each other's lives.