sometimes, we get going so deep with conversation, i feel like we are going to wrap ourselves in our voices and disappear. this is one of the nicest feelings. this is, as i must keep reminding myself, the reason why i am: the feeling of connection i can attain with someone like her is the closest thing to something holy or religious that i know. it is the feeling of connection i yearn for with all those i hold close to me.

she is a friend that is so important to me that the word "friend" does not do justice to the love i feel for her. ours is a relationship that i am proud of, without being prideful, if that makes sense. this is due not only to the person who she is, creative and artistically elegant, able to recognize beauty more directly and in a more refined way than i am able. more than that, i do not think i have met someone so blazingly courageous in taking on the project of making themselves exactly who they want to be. a contemplative and painful process, i can tell, one that she has accelerated over and over again. that she is so ready to hear the thoughtful criticism of the ones she loves and admires is more brave than i know how to be. she humbles me and reminds me that this is a working project, one that sometimes requires a cruel magnifying glass self-inspection, that the prize is not easily won. sometimes one must be willing to pull and tear at one's self, taking off each layer, reading its lines and gingerly feeling its shape, taking the time to carefully consider its worth and whether it is something that one wants to carry any longer. and though to indulge in the comfort of once again wrapping one's self, tight, cocoonlike, in familiar cottonwool scent, in those things that make up what we have come to know as "who i am" may be what we want more than anything, it may not be what we need. that she has shown herself, repeatedly, to be strong enough to unflinchingly lay those things down, to instead lay herself bare, in new skin, for the sake of becoming who she believes is someone of value--i can't put words to it. "admiration", "respect", neither is full enough to explain.

though, surely, this is a large part of why i love her so, and am so thankful for our relationship it is because we have both worked and fought so hard for each other that i am proud that we can call each other friend.

sometimes we fall out of step, the weaving in and out of each other's lives is like looking at a two dimensional representation of a double helix. but somehow we end up coming back together.

in late nights, in crying over brokenness, in tentatively showing each other the inside part of what goes on; in breaking silences and hoping for reconciliation. in (almost) 24 hour donut shops, on garage floors, covered in paint and writing in journals. through music shared and the something unspoken that needs to be there to finally feel understood. seeing in the other person a bit of the ideal that we want to be.