Falling in love with your best friend

I just found a crumpled up piece of paper on the bottom of one of the many stacks on my cluttered desk. It was something I wrote two years and one week ago, on the night before spring break of my sophomore year, when I was still in the dorms. Most kids had already gone home, leaving only me, my friend Kurt, and the girl next door. She and I had spent all of freshman year becoming best friends, and I'd spent all of sophomore year thus far falling in love with her.

I later convinced myself that there was at the time some sort of BLT going on, but by now I've given up evaluating what the situation really was.

The three of us remaining on the floor had a slumber party in her room, staying up all night. Just around daybreak, I got up saying I was going to the drinking fountain. I went to my room instead, sat down at my desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and wrote this:

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I love the way she smiles. I love the way she sings along with the Dawson's Creek song. I love that she sleeps with her arms folded under her pillow. I love how much she cares about her old roommates, and the stories she sometimes tells about them. I love that she loves Pizza Hut so much, and that she thinks ketchup is gross. I love that she thinks the dancing baby is cute, and that her eyesight is less than perfect. I love that every once in a while she seems taller than me, until we measure. I love how attached she is to her purple ball, and that she dances in her room when she thinks nobody's looking. I love the noises she makes with her stomach, and the way she gets along with her sisters, and how alike they all are. I love the way she always considers flipping her comforter just for a change before again deciding the plaid looks better. I love the way she complains about never getting e-mail. I love it when she calls anyone cute, how she's always willing to play, and that this was the first time she's ever stayed up all night. I love the way she misses her dog. I love the way she highlights things in her readers and reads sitting there by the door, or up on her bed. I love that she appreciates a good cheeseburger, and that she knows the Ugly Bug Ball song. I love the way she showed up for a 61A lecture just for fun. I love that she's as big an ER fan as me. I love the pictures on her wall, and the way she'll stare at a game of Snood. I love that she's in love with the Men's Octet. I love the way she worries that she's hitting snooze one more time than she used to. I love her laugh, and her handwriting, especially those little smiley-faces she draws. I love that she thinks I'm not a nerd, and the way she rubs my hair and giggles at its fuzziness. I love it when her eyes get huge, or when she raises her eyebrows and looks off to the side. I love that she wanted to squish the dough at King Pin, and that she's disgusted by Top Dog and Crack Alley.

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It's torn off there.

After writing this, I crumpled it up and threw it across the room, sinking it straight into the trash can. The next day I fished it out and opened it up, and sometime between then and now I tore off the bottom.

At the bottom you can kind of make out that the next line was "I love the way she loves her friends." The line after that is entirely gone, but I still remember that it said "It's the way she loves me that I just can't stand."

For all those people who have fallen in love with their best friend, a piece of advice (yes yes, I know everyone wants to give advice, but heck, just like all the others, mine is free so you can take it or leave it ;-)

Just as you start your relationship, look your best-friend-now-significant-other in the eye and remind them that up until now, you have been best friends. You have had and shared the best and worst of times and that even if the relationship should end, that both of you will remember and treasure what you have shared so far.

Relationships come and go, but friendships should last forever.

It always amazes me that so many people cannot remain friends simply because they went out together. What a waste to lose a best friend simply because you couldn't get a relationship to work! You should be mature enough to realise that you may not be 100% compatible with someone else, but that surely doesn't mean you can't be friends.

Relationships come and go, but friendships should last forever.

Why?

Why do relationships have to be different from friendships? Why can't they last forever as well? Why is everyone so obsessed over falling in love when they are surrounded by people who already love them?

Is it really so wrong to build a relationship from an already strong friendship? Why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone who isn't their friend in the first place? Why must my love be limited because I am her friend? Why does there have to be a cap on friendship?

Fantasy is good and all, but is reality really that bad? Even when the fantasy hurts and lies, why is it preferable to dig a deeper hole so you can fall further into it?

Maybe reality isn't as exciting as the fantasy people create, but sometimes the reality is easier, and some people deserve easy.

I think I'm right. I don't understand how so many other people can be wrong. I don't understand how they can be happy when it's so hard for me.

I don't understand, and that is the source of my sorrow.

Why do I so badly want it to make sense?

I think too much.

When we were friends, just friends, we were free. We could talk and be honest about who we were. We could share our selves with each other. Unfortunately, perhaps, we then fell in love, and even made that ultimate choice.

We began making a life together. We cooked dinner for two, put our laundry in the same basket, and used the same bank account. We may as well have become the same person. But somewhere along the line we forgot what made us fall in love. We stopped talking about our selves and discussed the bills instead. We had become a couple.

I suppose I have a different attitude than most as to what makes lovers love. I look around, see other couples, and they seem content to have a steady dinner partner and a steady lay. They're satisfied with the routine of daily living and don't seem to mind that there appears nothing new to discover about each other. I can't do that. I want to be with you because we can share us, not the mortgage.

We fell into that rut, you and I, and forgot to be friends.

I don't love my spouse. I love that best friend I once had. Where are we, old friends, now that we've become "intimate"? Is having a romantic liason intimate if the people involved are no longer friends? Or is it the feeling of obligation that makes you withdraw?

I know you're still in there, but is being a couple what keeps you away? If that's the case, let's lose that piece of paper. Be my friend again.