- So when I heard about the topic for today, platonic love, I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's so easy.

I love my friends."

But in all honesty, writing about my friends is harder than I thought it was going to be, and not because I can't talk about platonic love, because I can gush.

I can sit and I can talk about my friends and why I love them and why you should love them until the sun burns out and the earth freezes over.

But to put that love into something coherent and not sound insane and obsessed is actually kind of hard.

And maybe by the end of this, you will think I'm insane and obsessed with my friends.

But I hope you also feel some kind of understanding in the deepness of childhood friendships because they seem so casual on the surface, just someone we met when we were young that we liked hanging out with.

But they're the first connections that we make, the first people we choose outside of our families to love.

And as you age, they're portals to simpler times, they're mirrors to your truest self, they're safe places to land and rest and unclench your jaw and lower your shoulders.

With good friends, it doesn't matter how much time has passed, what phase of life you're in or where you hang out, rehashing the same stories with the same characters, with the same punchlines that always land.

It's awesome.

And I'm lucky enough to have two friends like that, Brooke and Maddie.

We used to hang out in the trail ditches that ran between their houses, telling stories and screaming over snakes that may or may not have been there and trying to leap over the ditch to the other side, sometimes not making it, but always helping each other out of the mud.

It's been nearly 25 years since we met in school, more than a decade since we hung out in the ditch, which spans a lot of time.

A lot of fads and changes and milestones.

And in that time we shared secrets and crushes and habits.

And maybe that's a big ingredient in the glue of friendships like that.

They know everything, every unhinged crush, every lie you've told your parents, every truth that only comes up in the delirious hours of sleepovers when you're trying so hard not to fall asleep.

Every bit of it is a stitch, sewing you all up together nice and snug, and then you grow.

Sometimes the sewing stretches and molds and morphs, and sometimes it frays and wears and gets holes.

Some people choose to throw stuff like this away and order a quickly constructed new one that may or may not last the next season.

Others choose to mend what they have, to hold onto it and take care of it.

Through all of grade school, the three of us were inseparable.

And in high school, Brooke went to an academy and Maddie and I were at our local high school.

New friends were made and groups expanded, homecomings intermingled, not a big deal.

As we neared high school graduation, I got the undeniable itch to just get out.

I had some older friends already in college where I was going and I was ready to leave and start a new chapter.

I didn't go to our prom, I almost missed my 18th surprise birthday party that Maddie had planned for me because I was so focused on getting out of town and spending weekend, the weekend with some other friends.

I was stretching and I wasn't looking at what I was pushing away.

And in college while I went to VCU and Maddie and Brooke went to tech, we all stretched in new and exciting ways, meeting new groups of people and falling in love and learning who we wanted to be and how we wanted to exist in the world.

But the fabric of our friendship was thinning.

For a few years, I was only seeing them through a screen, through photos online and a, hey, long time, no talk text.

It wasn't something that any of us were doing purposefully or maliciously.

It was just what was happening while our lives were expanding.

Then a loss hit one of us, the unimaginable loss of a sibling.

And all of a sudden the distance and the time felt minuscule.

All I knew was that I had to get there to them.

I found the next moment I could go be with them in a way that felt more honest to me than a phone call or a text of condolences, which meant that we were getting drunk and we were smoking pot and we were watching Patrick Swayze movies and eating chocolate ice cream and sharing memories of a brother who felt a lot like my own.

It was a good time.

But I also got the chance to see how they'd stretched, what ways they were different and what ways they were exactly the same.

We had no plans when I got to Brooke's front door except that I was crashing on the futon.

So we walked and they gave me a tour of a college that I'd almost gone to, a life that I'd almost lived.

We went grocery shopping and we cooked dinner together and swapped stories of bar nights and college escapades.

And one day with nothing else to do, we climbed a mountain in January and it was a great idea.

A hike that started with us very ill prepared, me layered in half of Brooke's sweaters and socks and their promises of beautiful sweeping mountain views in Blacksburg.

And it ended with snow and ice and fog and strong enough winds that could have knocked us down, but still lots of smiling and giggles and rosy cheeks.

I got to meet their boyfriends and their new friends and we went to a true frat party, something I was not doing in Richmond.

And I saw how they knew where the bar was and who was behind it and where the better girl bathroom was in that specific house.

I felt like I was getting to know them all over again.

And when my visit came to an end, I drove home with tears in my eyes for the time I felt I'd wasted being so focused on leaving where I was or moving on from whatever past I felt like I needed to that I wasn't paying attention to who I was leaving there.

I'd had these pangs of guilt throughout those few days for what I'd felt I'd missed.

And I know now that they'd felt them too.

And since then, we've come to the consensus that when the call is made or when the shoe drops, that none of that even matters anyway.

It matters that we forge something stronger, something that transcends time and distance and differences, something that makes every visit feel deep to the core kind of special because Brooke and Maddie are something special, more special to me than good friends or best friends or even sisters.

They are me.

They know me to my core and to be known and loved to your core is unlike anything else.

Brooke recently had her first baby, a baby boy, Jacob, and Maddie and I were able to meet Jacob together and I had this feeling sitting on the couch with the both of them and this little guy that's now like innately and immediately so special to us.

And it felt like time was stretching all around us and I could see all the younger and the older versions of us sitting together just like this, huddled close and laughing and grateful just to be near each other.

Just a mere 25 years ago, which does feel terrifyingly not long ago at all, we were just little kids jumping around in a ditch or playing mermaids in the pool, not thinking about college or marriage or jobs or kids of our own and who knows what else will change in the next 25 years.

We could be further apart.

Our group chat could instead be our floating holographs in each other's living rooms, gabbing and laughing and telling the same stories again, or I could finally convince them to buy land with me and we could live together forever and raise our families together and do rituals in the woods or something.

But anyway, that's what's special about those forever friends because nothing ever really, really changes.

You're still six years old and 13 and 22 and 28, and they're still the ones who you choose out of any place on earth to hang out in a ditch with.

Thank you.