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The best friends in the world are the ones you can be absolutely ridiculous with, and it doesn't matter. The girl I love to spend time with the most on campus is the girl who laughs too loud (like me), who puts her foot in her mouth often (like me), and who trips over breaks in the sidewalk about as often as I do. She doesn't get uncomfortable when I mention my insecurities, she doesn't change the subject when I confess why I'd been depressed lately. It's wonderful. She cracks me up, and people stare, but we can't stop and we don't care. We haven't known each other long enough to weather the lowest lows, but she's known my moderate-sized lows thus far. I don't usually let people in that quickly.

I seem to do that instinctively- search out the people I can care for deeply. It just usually takes longer. I look at the people I've fallen in with and wonder, "where have you been my entire life?"

I can't imagine having only a surface-level relationship with everyone I know. I'd wither from it. That's what I had when I first got here, and I was deeply miserable. I clung tightly to my online friends because they knew me and I could still tell them things, like how the squirrels weren't shy and how the sky looked upside-down when it was near rain. And now that I'm beginning to build the soul-deep friendships I crave (at least right now we're past the skin- still working on souls) it would be even lonelier than ever to imagine a world of surface relationships.

But this guy I talk on the phone with for hours at a time is used to that- it surprises him to have more than a good-time-pal relationship with me, I think. If that's what this is. The fact that we can listen to each other's silence without babbling, and can say ridiculous things moments after pouring our hearts out, tells me that this could be something I hold on to for years. And he says he's never had that.

I asked him who he missed most from home, and he had no one he missed (more than any other in particular). It rooted me. I stayed silent for a moment, then said tentatively (and kind of pensively, because I was already wondering what that was like) that it sounded lonely. He paused, and said it was. And told me about it.

I had to take a moment to pick my heart up out of its melted puddle on the floor. The fact that he can say he never had heart-to-hearts with anyone before, and then proceed to let me into his mind, is something I can't quite describe.

One of the greatest things in existence must be that moment when you truly begin to understand someone. Because that's the moment you begin to love them. And there's something to love in everyone, so all you have to do is search out that beating heart inside them, and watch it glow.

I love that there are people out there looking for mine in here. Some of them might even find it, and I'll belong to them forever. Maybe this opens me up for deeper heartbreak when the ineveitably finite relationships end, and deeper loneliness when I part from these cross-country people for the summer, but for now I don't care. I've guarded my heart long enough. I'm not that ugly little fourth grader anymore, and with my swan's feathers I can let people in, the way I did at the end of highschool when I was so close to perfect so many times.

I could call up a million memories: crying on the bathroom floor with Jennifer, laughing until I was dizzy with Grace, hugging Edward after our duet brought the mall to its feet, and dancing the world into a swirl over Chris's shoulder, so soft in his tux, and me about to cry because one day he would be miles away.

I have more. Sara's voice soft in the darkness, giving my confidence back to me. Singing until my heart hurt in her car, then grinning when she hit the "replay" button. Victor car-dancing. Running after Briana's chair as she yells "outta the way!" down the steep incline. David: "But you're very pretty." Michael laughing so hard at something I said, I can hear the phone shake in his hand.

Of course this all means nothing to the casual observers who just came here to see what my online journal was about. Sorry 'bout that. Yesterday was so middling, and today so much better, that I can't help it.

No clever closing remarks today, sorry.

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