She will be loved

I was at lunch today with two of my very best girls and while talking over french-fries and cheeseburgers, I could hear a song by Maroon Five playing. Like many songs, this one reminds me of a happy time in my life when I was 20 or 21 when I met someone that would become a very good friend of mine. She loved Maroon Five.

After five years of friendship, she got married to her long-time boyfriend. I was honored to be her maid of honor in the wedding. Today she lives in Texas with her military husband, and in three months she'll be living half way across the world in a beautiful Italian city, further away from me than she's ever been before. I know she's going to love it. She's going to see things I'll only ever wish I had seen and while I'll spend much of my time missing her, I'll spend the rest of that time feeling green-eyed that she's going to be so experienced in European culture and life.

I'm still feeling the pain of growing up. I always wanted to be an adult and do adult things and have adult responsibilities, but now that the time is here, I realize that this transformation involves hard stuff too, like learning to cope with the fact that people, the same people you've loved for so many years, move away to begin their adult lives. And I hate that kind of change.

I wonder if time and space will pull us apart, and I hate the wondering part as much as I hate the actual possibility of it happening.

To my beautiful friend, I know you're going to be so happy in your new home. Do know that I love you so so so much and that no matter how much time or space separates us, you will always be loved.