Girls like Us are Impossible to Find

Puppy is sleeping in the sun. Sometimes she stretches and adjusts her position, letting out little sighs. I can't really look at her without blinding myself. The sunshine is like a halo around her.

She understands me so well. Sometimes I'll just be sitting in a chair, or laying on the grass outside, and Puppy will come along and paw at my hand, or nuzzle my face. She likes being level with me. When I am standing, she stands up, leaning with her two front feet on me, staring up into my face. When I lay on the grass or the floor she goes into fits of joy, for whatever reason. She always wants to be close to me, and it seems like she can never be close enough.

I understand what she wants. She doesn't have to bark at me, or whimper. She doesn't speak any verbal language. But she doesn't just exist either.

She just came and laid her head in my lap and looked up at me with her big brown eyes.

Why can't people exist like this? Why is it so easy to know how an animal is feeling, and yet so impossible to tell what a person is feeling? Is it really impossible, or do we just set up blinders for other people? Or do we just not care?

Everything is right with the world when she's with me.

I had a coffee date with my best friend today. The one who I got into a fight with almost exactly a week ago that ended with her breaking up our 13 year long friendship.

We decided that we really can't live without each other, and that we have a lot of work to do, but that we need each other. Life is ridiculously lonely without each other, even if we can't see each other every day. Knowing the other person is just a phone call away makes all the difference.

Much like with Puppy, everything is right with the world when Kate is with me.

I hope we outgrow this weird limbo our relationship had found itself in as of late. We're not the best friends we have been since the first grade, but we're not the friends who call each other a couple times a year to check in and say 'hey.' We need to figure out what we both want and need out of this relationship, and then things will be alright. I just want the transition from "best friends forever" to "hey, what have you been up to in the last year?" to be smoother than it has been.

I know we can't be the same girls who shared every secret, who when one got in trouble the other was right there with her, who were basically inseparable from the age of 7 on, but we can still be friends. They don't call us Kratechel for nothing.

This growing up thing is really, really hard.

Nine days until life goes back to normal.