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Sweetest Loves I’ve Known

So Far

By Ariana GonBonPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
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Sweetest Loves I’ve Known
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

6 - My best friend since preschool and I talk over the phone whenever I move away, which is often. I insist there are no flowers in Arizona to her, instead telling her about seeing tulips for the first time.

8 - There is no way this boy and I are close. But we share a birthday, and we are especially nice to each other while passing stickers back and forth on our last-day-of-school birthday and we sit next to each other all day.

8 - An older girl, a family friend, gives me a stuffed fairy bear before I move away. I fall in love with her for that.

8 - I meet my best friend in church, and I don’t even remember meeting her. I only remember running into her arms and loving her.

10 - My babysitter goes to college and sends me a postcard.

11 - When I visit my old school friends, they sing me a Hannah Montana song: I miss you, I miss your smile…

12 - I tell my best friend in middle school that I’m bisexual. She says it’s a sin to be gay. I say then I’m half a sinner, even when I don’t believe I’m a sinner at all. A few days later, she tells me that she doesn’t believe I’m a sinner anymore. She hugs me again.

13 - My babysitter and I share a birthday, and we call each other when I turn 13 and she turns 26. Our names are even one letter off from each other.

13 - A new girl is only there for a couple of months in 8th grade. I missed a day of the only class I had with her. She missed me so much and gives me a hug that completely envelopes me. Her sweater smells of cigarettes. The best cigarettes have ever smelled.

14 - I tell a girl in math class that she can’t sell her leftover Vicodin to compete with the drug cartels. We walk to the bus together and become inseparable for the rest of high school, except for when she abandons me for hockey in another state.

18 - The quilting club at church sends me to college with a shawl. I feel each prayer they stitched in.

18 - I run towards strong friends and they pick me up as I wrap my legs around them. Oh, to be held.

18 - A family friend sends me postcards every week of college.

18 - My friend, AKA flirtationship, talking with me for hours on Facetime after the hardest break up of my life. I don’t want to imagine life without him.

19 - The love for myself as I explore Boston, alone, feeling uncomfortable with myself but in no rush to be anywhere.

19 - Finding out my grandfather prayed The Magnificat during the birth of all his grandchildren.

20 - My best friend in college also being excited to be able to track our menstrual cycles together over the Clue app.

20 - The 2016 election is decided. A friend and I watch the impending results while sipping hot tea with cheap wine in it. I share an extra long twin bed with her even though she knows she will get no sleep out of it.

21 - I end my first serious relationship. He didn’t deserve to be broken up with. My friend holds my hand while I’m on the phone with him, telling him we’re done. I leave him crying and I ask her to sleep next to me on my futon and she says yes, even though she likes her space and I sleep close.

21”+” - Being and meeting drunk girls in the bathroom.

22 - A new friend and I go to Costco together and split a bigass pack of toilet paper.

23 - One of my littles texts me “Happy Mother's Day!”

23 - Two friends celebrate my 23rd birthday with me, from karaoke to dancing to watching women strip together. They don’t know each other and they dance together. One stays sober so she can drive us around. She says I scared the bouncer at the strip club when I angrily told him it was illegal to charge for water, even though that is apparently only an Arizona thing.

24 - I collect all the cards my mother sent me - everyday of college - and bind them into books.

24 - My grandfather has died. I cry with my partner over the phone.

25 - Weirdly, a new coworker saying “we get to keep you?!” when they realize I am joining that store. I hope they weren’t being sarcastic.

25 - New friends not being afraid to say I Love You after only knowing each other for a couple of months. Love isn’t scarce, just attention.

26 - Forehead kisses, from the same friend who stayed sober on my 23rd birthday, on my 26th birthday.

26 - Forehead kisses from my partner when my mind is angry. They are my human weighted blanket.

Always - When you compliment a stranger and they light up, and sometimes they even compliment you back.

Always - Platonically holding hands.

Always - Friends that text, thinking about you, even when you can’t respond. Essentially, every figment, every single handwritten and typed note, card, letter, email. All pebbles make a mountain.

I don’t care if these are small, I care that I am loved.

friendship
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About the Creator

Ariana GonBon

26yo bi Xicana. There's always more to write about, in more interesting ways than white men. Follow me @arte.con.ariana, all tips will go to @openyrpurse, both on Instagram.

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