A Letter to Mahli

(Pre-Script Note: Mahli is an engaging and wonderful individual that I have known since we were 12-13 years old. We're now 22 years old. Do the math. Relationships like those are the ones that you hold on to with all of your might and love with all of your [platonic] heart.)

Miss Mahli,

Today, you get aboard a hunk of metal, soar into the air, cruise in the air for a while, descend, and arrive in a completely new culture. A new sort of civilization that you fell in love with 3-4 years ago.

You have been working and saving and learning for the past 3-4 years just so you could get in that hunk of metal and land in Mexico.  I'm so proud of you for achieving your goal.

I know that there are a lot of uncertainties, now that you've gone and are completely on your own, basically for the first time in your life.  Well, perhaps on your own physically (minus the factor of one very lucky dude).  But you're definitely not on your own emotionally or support-wise stateside.

When I met Mahli, I didn't like her. She seemed mean and bossy and pushy.
Seemed being the key word in that sentence.
I judged Mahli at face value for something I don't think she even realized she did.
(She cut in front of me in line with her friend Angie at volleyball tryouts in 7th grade).

I've learned a lot from her and that first experience.

I have a lot of really fond memories of this lady. And writing them all would be virtually endless.
But we did have one tradition throughout High School that I remember fondly.

Nearly every Friday evening, we would get together at her house. With Puppy Chow (the human treat) in tow, we would spend the next 1-2 hours watching Most Haunted.

Yes, we were silly back then.
We're still silly now.

And while we were watching it. We would talk. We would catch up (our classes often didn't coincide). We would gossip like silly girls.

And that was wonderful.
It was cathartic for both of us.

College brought about separation.
(Mahli, don't tell anyone, but you were one of two people I actually cried about leaving. It was silly of me. I'm generally an internal emotional roller coaster, no matter the stoic appearance.)

But we stayed friends throughout the next for years, even with minimal communication.

And we're going to stay friends throughout the next however many years, with communication.

It's always a much more difficult thing to say "Good Bye" to people, when you know that you can talk to them online at nearly any moment. It's like they're always here and the break/separation is not actually happening.  There isn't a clean break, and that's something that the generation before me and my generation and the generations following me have to deal with.

How do you say "Good Bye" while logging on to a chat platform and saying "Hello" simultaneously.

It's tough.

Mahli, I cannot adequately express, in written form, how pleased I am to have known you for the past years of our lives.  We've had a typical friendship in many ways, but an extraordinary one in others.  I want the best for you, Miss Mahli.  Know that, if you should ever need any help, I am always a phone call away (no matter the stupid "roaming" fee the cell phone company may put on it).

All my [platonic] Love,
Feegieweegielemonsqueegee