Found Sisters

It is amazing to me how life can hand you exactly what you need sometimes, if you can only learn to recognize it. A woman whom I've known since I was fourteen has become like a sister to me during the past 20 years, and I just don't know how I would have made it all this way without her there beside me.

It's a friendship that has stood the tests of time, literally. We had a couple of falling-outs, though never the screeching, saying-things-that-will-make-you-regret-it-thrity-minutes-later kind, just... I see your life going in that direction, and mine is going down this road right now, but keep in touch and maybe they will converge again...

And they ALWAYS did, much to our mutual delight. We always reached out to one another again, and there we would find that same solid, knowing friendship which never faltered even with the distance of time and space. When we met, we felt so familiar to each other that we gushed on a daily basis about things so private NO one else had ever heard them- most secrets had not even been uttered out loud to ourselves. Though not related by blood, it was as if we had lived parallel lives and had come up with parallel conclusions, which fortified and strengthened us in our resolve to survive past the painful truths in our lives. And our joys were equal as well, some of the same things delighting us, our differences only serving to compliment each other.

We became joined at the hip for several years, until teenageritis hit around our senior year of high school and we came to the first fork in the road. It was touch-n-go for some time after that, with me living my life out of my house for the first time, and she trying to cope with college and living with her single mother. Every time we came back together, though, it was solid, pure love and never weighted down with vengeance. Regret over lost time, almost always, but never accusatory. She was married long before I was- married during a time in my life when I could not have been more lonely- and that distanced us for a little while. Then she had a son and sought me out, and a year later I was giving birth to mine own son then, and through new motherhood we stoked the old flame of our closeness and it has blazed ever since. Life is less like a roller coaster now, for both of us, so the valleys don't run as deep as they used to (so deep that you cannot see the sunlight anymore). And the hills are not as treacherous to climb.

The time we spend together is, I know, priceless. She understands me and my nature better than anyone I know, and oftentimes better than myself. She has a way of telling me things I'm afraid to tell myself; like forgiveness is the key to release the heavy burden of revenge and regret, and that life is too short to wallow in guilt and self-pity. Things I logically know are true but are afraid to actually believe.

This entry is for her, for the challenges we both face now and will face in the future; challenges and dark places and happiness, always facing them together. Two rocking chairs on the front porch of Shady Pines Retirement Home for the Hopelessly Ancient await us...