My On and Off Again Best Friend

There are some people you say you'd do anything for. And then there's some people you'd actually do anything for.

And there's never more than one of these people in your life at any given time. But when they're there...you find yourself doing crazy things that you won't find crazy. Because they're for that person.

Mine just came back into my life. (She's a girl, by the way. Usually these people are of the opposite sex. Unless you're a homosexual. Which is fine. It's the nature of the phenomenon I'm going for here.) And she brought up this notion while I was sitting in the ER with her.

The purpose of her ER visit really wasn't an emergency. She had scraped her ankle on a metal cart two days prior and her parents were insisting she go to the ER to get a tetanus shot. And she told me it was insanely nice for me to take her to the ER and sit with her, for something as little as that. I thought hard about that...because if I wanted to go to the ER for something as little as that...well, I'm not sure I would have found anyone to go with me. Except for maybe her.

She and I hadn't spoken for about two months and were very recently getting back into exchanging words. The cause of our silence?

Well...it's a long story. Let's just say this girl could be my Elliot. Or my Rachel. Or my Pam. The "One" that I'll end up with at the end of my series. I've made out with this girl before. Our emotional lines have been crossed. We're not sure where we stand. We just know that we connect on some insane level.

When we're both not being completely neurotic, anxiety-ridden, emotional twenty-somethings.

She was at home, by herself, car-less, when her parents freaked her out enough to consider the ER. And since we were texting a bit at the time, she texts me "Um...do you think you'd be interested in taking me to the ER?"

Of course, I was at her beck and call.

Normally, this would be fine, I'd take any friend to the ER. But this is what I mean when I say "do anything for." She really didn't need to go to the ER. I had just gotten my pupils dilated from the eye doctor, so I couldn't even see straight. Philadelphia just had the most wicked snowstorm, so I didn't even know if I could make it to her place.

But I went anyway.

And we've got to be the only people who have ever sat in the ER for three and a half hours, laughing, catching up, and having the time of our lives together. My heart stood still when she said the words, "I've missed you."

I had missed her too. And while this was dangerous territory we were stepping back into, I couldn't help but be reminded the message of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (if you haven't seen the movie, spoilers ahead, so be forewarned.)

Joel and Clementine fall in love, fall out of love, erase their memories so they can move on, meet again, fall in love again, discover they've had their memories erased because their relationship didn't work, but they decide to go ahead with the relationship again anyway...knowing it won't work.


Why do they do this? Because that connection, those memories, those times where it's just that amazing and cannot happen with anyone else...those are worth the terrible, painful emotions that often accompany such bliss.

As I dropped her off at home, she told me she had my Christmas present that she had been holding onto for me since we said goodbye. It was a framed picture of her and I for my new desk and my new job. So it would feel like home.

It will now.

I can't be sure what's going to happen in the future for us. Whether the friendship will be too hard to bear, whether it will work nice and easy, or whether we'll decide to take that leap into a full-blown relationship. I just know I'm willing to take the risk.

-Spontaneous K