To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before

This piece is for my girls (you know yourselves). I’m really grateful that our paths crossed, whether online or in real life. A lot of my best memories, biggest laughs, and safest moments exist because of you guys. Honestly, you all deserve your own separate appreciation post for how amazing you are.

You know that moment when you are sitting across from someone and in the middle of a random conversation, you suddenly realize this person has quietly become your person? The one you send screenshots to without thinking, the one who notices when your energy changes, the one you can sit with in silence without it feeling awkward. And nothing dramatic happened. Just small moments piling up until one day, you look at them and think, “yup… this is my friend.”

I’ve been sitting with this thought lately.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that love only shows up as romance. That somewhere in the world, a prince charming or sleeping beauty is waiting to give us a “happily ever after” ending. I used to believe this badly, and I have Disney to blame for this delulu.

Because when I look closely at my life, it is not romance that has held me the most. It is friendship. It is the women in my life who have seen every version of me and still stayed. The ones who know when I am not okay, even when I say I am fine. The ones I can disappear and still come back to, no questions asked.

There is something holy about being loved by your friends. Because let’s be honest, some romantic relationships barely survive six months, while certain friendships survive everything. Bad decisions. Career crises. Terrible haircuts. Toxic exes. Emotional meltdowns at 2 a.m. Your friends are the people who hear the same story fifteen times and still answer the phone anyway. If that is not love, then I do not know what is.

The temple of female friendship is a beautiful place to exist in. Sometimes I look at these women and wonder what I did to deserve them. How strangers slowly became sisters and then became home.

To be loved is to be seen, and my best friends see me clearly.

Once again, I’m so eternally grateful to get to experience my life with such amazing young women by my side, to be my cheerleaders, my closest confidants, and my sisters.