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Topic: Gary

There are people in every person's life that just hold weight -- that, no matter how long they're out of touch, the connection never wanes. Gary is one of those people in my life. We've known each other for seventeen years now. We grew up together and for the first five or six years of school, we had class together every single day.

Once I got into high school, we went our separate ways -- still lived in the same town, but went to different schools. This would become a pivotal key in the development of our friendship -- or lack of development as it would be. We lost touch. Almost completely. And for several years.

After five years of not communicating, as luck would have it, we would register for the same class in college. It was a small class and we were required to be paired with someone. Despite attempting to make only same-sex pairs, Gary convinced the teacher to pair us together and it was then that we reignited our friendship.

But even with 11 or 12 years of history behind us, the friendship we re-discovered that day was not the same one we'd had from childhood. We had both become drastically different people who faintly resembled the identities we possessed in childhood. The reason the connection was still there though, was because regardless of current maladies or personal plagues, we each knew who the other truly was.

Gary -- a small town boy with the heart of a lion, the compassion of a child with un-jaded eyes, and the spirit of a tumbleweed. Gary loves his family, gives the shirt off his back, thinks with his own mind, and believes in doing what's right regardless of repercussions.

And me -- a small town girl with her suitcase packed for the day she travels the world, an uncontrollable craving for goodness in the humankind, the daydreams of a free spirit, and the cage of a bird.

Despite whatever else may identify me today, Gary knows those core qualities will always exist in me. As I know the same goes for him, regardless of our demons.

He has the unfortunate ability to be selfless to the degree of personal suffering and selfish to the degree of self-destruction. It's saddening and it breaks my heart when I see him in these most fragile states. At the time I started writing this, he had no faith in any kind of higher power. And had no accurate knowledge of what it meant to ask for help.

Now he's come to a point in his life where he knows if he doesn't soon discover the ability to get help, he won't need to for reason of death. That is a terrifying and eye-opening reality. I know him well enough to know he's substantially smarter than most any other person I know. And that intelligence level is his very own blessing and curse.

What's happening here is I don't know how to end this. Honestly, I don't think this will end. He will always have reason to call me his 'best girl friend' because I will never turn my back on him, I will never let him down and I will never give him another opportunity to forget who he is.

I believe things happen for a reason. I believe we were apart for five years because this is something he needs to experience. And if he and I hadn't gone our separate ways through the years that truly define a person's adulthood, I highly doubt he'd be where he is today. I believe this is where he should be -- and needs to be. And I believe it's my job to remind him of this every single day. And I believe when he leaves this place, the people waiting on the other side will be the people who truly know he can think with his own mind and not some addiction.

And I cannot wait for that day.

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