Dear Best Friend,
I honestly have no idea where I would be without having met you, and I definitely wouldn't be who I am today without your friendship and (good and bad) influences. When I first knew you, I hated you. I feel like a lot of best friends go through this phase. Although, this wasn't really our fault because someone told us that we hated each other, so we figured we had to. But, as a few months passed you became my friend after pranking girls at cheer camp together and eventually you became my best friend.
I know that you already know this, but you became my best friend while I was going through a pretty tough time. I had a boyfriend that wasn't right for me, I was hanging out with a group of friends that I will happily never have to see again, and I was trying to figure out the pressures of high school. However, after having you as my best friend it seems like all the negativity left my life. My boyfriend and I broke up, and I started dating the boy of my dreams. The people I was hanging out with at the time and I went separate ways, and I gained the most amazing friend group I could possibly imagine. And while high school pressures are inevitable, they somehow seemed unimportant with you by my side and I found myself through that.
High school is definitely not for the weak, however, you somehow handle drama like a professional. Whenever I got upset about some petty drama, you always had a way of making me see how dumb it was because that person and that drama were unimportant in my life, and you were already planning your attack for revenge on the person that made me upset. It is hard to find loyal friends nowadays, but you are by far the most loyal person I know. If someone in Iowa was ever doing something to hurt me, I know that you would be here in a heartbeat to kick some butt or at least to start a Twitter fight. I know that you would do absolutely anything for me and always have my back, and I can't say that about very many people.Thank you for creating so many memories with me. I wish I could share all of them, but most would either get us in trouble or was probably illegal. The best thing about you was that you were always my partner in crime.
Even though we became friends in high school, we still talk every single day. I think that's pretty rare, and it is something I am proud of. Even states apart, I still feel so close to you, and you can still make me laugh out loud. I will always cherish our times together on the cheer team, coaching Gators, our vacations, our days and days of making up choreography, our girls nights, our summers and "Pretty Little Liars" marathons, or even the times we drove around singing to cheer music while picking up McDonalds. I don't think either of us realized at the time how important those moments would be. I also want to thank you for giving me a second family, and for taking in my family as your own. Sometimes it was just easier hearing advice from your mom, and I know my sister looks up to you like you're her other older sister.
If someone were to tell my eighth grade self that you and I would be best friends, I probably would have laughed in their face and told them how much I hated you because you "apparently" called me a mean name once. Well, fast forward to junior year of college and here we are talking about being each other's maid-of-honor. The fact that in all those years of being best friends, and we've never had a huge fight just shows how much love we have for each other. I know I say this all the time, but I really, really hope that every person has a Kayla Slimak in their life, because living without one is a life not worth having.
