Change and Best Friends

As a person who lives with anxiety, whenever that pang hits my gut, I know it's because I really care about something. I'm worried about the change it will bring. All the things I stand to lose if the world begins to shift. The higher the stakes, the higher the anxiety it causes.

Of course, just as my imagination crafts a potential destructive outcome, it also works overtime creating flights of fancy. I hate to live in the moment. The moment is full of strife, fast paced scenarios and immediate decisions. I live in the future, sometime between all of my dreams and all of my nightmares colliding and forming a concrete reality. I imagine all the scenarios, imagine what I would do and how things will be. When I'm depressed, I convince myself how much better it will be when I get to my destination, to that magical point where it all makes sense and everything falls into place.

I've spent a lot of time depressed lately. I've started ripping all the decorations off the walls, throwing things out, planning for the next big thing. Planning for our move, the thing that's gonna change it all this time, which is coming up in 4 months. I've called apartments, I've fantasized living room arrangements comprised of new decor, shopped school districts and told my children that it's going to be magical. It has to be magical.

But today, I came face to face with a thought that I've been trying to avoid. I will be leaving my best friend behind. We haven't seen each other for a while, so it made it easier to ignore, but today I remembered exactly what I'm going to be losing. We went to the playground, laughed like hyenas and talked about things that made the other parents clutch their pearls. So I want to write this directly to her.

Sarah,
You've been my best friend for the last 5 years. You've been here for me through everything, through every move, every time Cora has shown you her vagina, every time I've been a hermit and preferred sulking over company, you've been there without hesitation. And when we are together, WE ARE MAGIC. It's easy. I can't explain it, but it's never strained with you, it's just always fun and amazing and it happens so easily. We just click. You bring out the things in me that I love about myself. You make me love me because you love me. You make me feel fun, feel alive again. You brighten my spirit and my world and I can't thank the Universe enough for finding a way to place us in each other's paths. And I'm absolutely heart broken that the parts of me that think that moving away from here is going to fix things, have negated to count the loss that my heart is going to take when I can't see you all the time. When we can't stand outside cackling about penises and pissing off the neighbors. When we can't talk about spending a fortune on unnecessary pregnancy tests because we're both paranoid, and finish off two bottles of white and have to run over to the store, dancing in the aisles, only to get carded and have forgotten our IDs. When I won't walk home barefoot because I danced myself right out of my shoes. I fucking love you. You make my life fun. You fucking complete me. I don't care if that's cliche. And although I will need to settle for visits once or twice a year (because I could never be entirely without you, my heart wouldn't allow it), I am going to be devastated to say goodbye to you. More devastated than any part of me could have ever imagined.

You better come to camp. Like, every year. And we are going to do this shit up right before I go.
But never forget that I'm gonna miss you. And no matter what, I always love you. Always. You were the only thing I liked about California. I'm leaving part of my soul here.