Personal Narrative: My Best Of Friends

I met my best friend at seven years old. From our very first moment, we were inseparable. Growing up in two starkly different households- two starkly different lifestyles- didn’t quell the bond we shared, and for years after our first meeting, we remained the best of friends. Our friendship bridged the gap between our parents and as we grew closer together, our families intertwined. Within the span of a year, Berea, my best friend, and I had become beyond inseparable, we had become family. At the young age of eight years old, I had become someone’s family, but unlike the family I was born into, this family was chosen, this family was held not by blood but by the pure resolve to be around each other. For a while, that seemed to be enough.

It was months of trying to remain a constant in one another’s life before we finally drifted to a close. We were both too stubborn to admit defeat. We had survived her moving six hours away and back, and we were determined to survive this… until we weren’t. I drifted for a while, unkempt by the lack of her constance in my life. It seemed that I didn’t know who to be without her presence, and even though, I had built a life around me, a group of friends outside of her, there seemed to be a nagging force behind my every action that kept me spinning, seemingly out of

Berea and I had written together most of our friendship. It was something that bonded us the most, the love of pouring words on to paper, the love of crafting stories of people who were completely our own. She was better at it, older, smarter, but sitting alone, for what felt like the hundredth time in only a week, I opened my laptop and I typed. The words were rough and the grammar even rougher, but the act of pounding out my feelings on the slick black keys made the pounding in my head lessen. With every keystroke of a word that burned like acid through my fingers, I could breathe easier. The pain, the darkness, of that incessant loneliness in my head seemed to quell with the action of speaking about it, even as no sound left my lips. Writing became my solace then, the place I poured the resolve I had one poured into Berea. Through my writing, i found a voice, and it rang more true than my actual voice ever could. It was blanketed with the stuttering of speech or the uneasiness of anxiety like my true voice was, and as more words appeared and characters appeared and a plotline inked its way across my brain, I began to grow a confidence in myself. Through writing, I discovered what I loved, the music i wanted to listen to, and the books I wanted to read. Through writing, i found a love for science and a solace through the heartache of losing someone I never pictured my life without. Sixteen now, I