My BO$$ BFF

I have known Alexis longer than her last name has been Adkins. My girl and I go way back. Therefore, there is no way in the world I am missing the opportunity to tell the world what a BO$$ with two dollar signs she is. She is an artist of immense talent in any craft she tries. They may say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but anyone who beholds her work and doesn't see beauty needs a trip to the optometrist.

Before I introduce her business, Alexis's Creative Corner, much more, I want to introduce her as a person and my best friend. I've always been the odd one out, which made moving around constantly even harder. Senior year was the worst because I was starting at a new school and knew going in that whatever friends I made would be scattered across a thousand different colleges in a few months. That said, I was outgoing and assumed I would make friends. My new school had other plans. As much as I had loved the movie Mean Girls up until this point, I didn't want to live in it. While this school didn't name their cliques and I never identified which group was the "plastics," they were certainly highly exclusive in who was allowed to eat lunch with them. Ironically however, if you ate lunch alone, they would all stare at you wondering why you didn't try to eat with someone's group. I literally watched a whole table get up and move to another one when I tried to eat with them.

I eventually opted to hide in the library and eat, because it wasn't nearly as strange to be alone in the library, but one of the days the librarian caught me with food and I had to suffer the embarrassment of sitting in the senior commons like everyone else, Alexis sat next to me. She smiled and said, "No one should have to eat alone. What's your name?"

Perhaps I was easily impressed, but I'd never met anyone who actually listened to teachers' and parents' request to befriend the person sitting alone. Through that lunch I found out that she too was an oddball like me and from that moment on, we were best friends. However, as is typical in high school, things got complicated. I started dating a guy who she was friends with, but I slowly found out he only pretended to like her. He pressured me to avoid her, I didn't want to take sides or hurt feelings, so while we still hung out, it was less frequent and more strenuous. As I continued dating this toxic trash bag after graduation and she was dealing with the aftermath of other things that went down that year (which I won't get into for her sake), we drifted apart. A year or two later, after I left the jerk and she'd met someone new, we reconnected, right where we left off. Without the high school drama surrounding us and clouding our judgment, we were better friends than ever.

She's inspired me to learn how to draw as a coping mechanism for my mental illness. In fact, she's inspired me to do a lot of things, like kick butt and be myself. To this day, she is still on my top three humans list, with her son (who is also my godson), being right next to her on the list. Depending on how adorable he's being or how stinky his diaper is, the two of them switch ranking frequently.

For this, and many other reasons, I want to take every opportunity I can to support her creative and entrepreneurial endeavors. Not only does she draw exceptionally well, but she makes some of the most beautiful jewelry I have ever worn. She sent me a pair of beautiful black and gold earrings that I will definitely be wearing on my first night out after this pandemic. I'm not one to wear jewelry regularly, but what she makes is irresistible. While Alexis has a few templates and pre-made options to choose from, she's always willing to try new things and work with you to make a custom pair for a reasonable price. Right now she puts the mom in mom-and-pop shop, but I know that her talent will take her far.