Growing Pains

On the first day of sixth grade, I sat beside a girl in homeroom. We talked. We became friends. We talked on the phone endlessly, even though I always hated talking on the phone. We killed half the Amazon Rain Forest writing notes, including one of the true cementing factors to our friendship: The Notebook. We passed the The Notebook back and forth every day at school after writing in it each night. We made up symbols for the names we didn't want exposed in case it fell into the wrong hands, and confessed our deepest worries in that black binder.

Always a private person, I found I could open up to her, and even now seven years later, I still tell her things I can't tell anyone else. Even though we never really had the most in common, we've remained friends through it all.

I don't know what I'd do without her. But the realization came crashing down tonight--I might have to.

I know there's the internet and letters and telephones, but it's not the same. It's not the same as being able to meet up at Talquepaque for lunch and the rain that always seems to accompany these trips. How do I survive without seeing her name pop up on my messenger list every day, and the typing style I've come to know so well spill out the worries of her day?

Even though I'm 18, applying to college, and generally on the threshold of adulthood, it never really seemed that real to me until my best friend from sixth grade tells me she's contemplating marriage and moving halfway across the country, away from everything she's known, away from me. I told her a million times in middle school that her beloved would come around and see her for the amazing girl she is, and now my prophecy is coming true to a dizzying degree.

But I'm also so excited for her. I'm excited that she gets a new and exciting life. Truly, there is not much here for her. She could reach her higher potential somewhere else, and maybe help her maybe-husband reach his too. There is room to grow outside of the little world she's always lived in, and it would be a shame if fear kept her from inhabiting this new life.

Just last week, we were sitting in my floor playing board games, one of which was Life. As we moved the cars through the rapidly progression lifetime, I never imagined her real life would move as quickly so soon.

But I wish her a little plastic husband who is devoted and loving, a career card that she enjoys with a salary card she doesn't want to trade, Life Tiles full of things she's always dreamed of, and maybe, someday, a plastic car full of beautiful plastic peg children. And when she gets to the end of the gameboard, I hope she takes it all at Millionaire Acres.

But most of all, I hope we can still mail back and forth our secrets and dreams and hopes in a proverbial The Notebook.