as she ponders

"I think I met you at the wrong time, Megan. I knew what you were when I first saw you, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And anyway, you weren’t ready for me."

My best friend from my freshman year of college started his most recent email to me that way. The statement preceded a lengthy (and darling) introduction as to his fiance - namely the quirks that he adores and has committed to spend his life with. I was, of course, still stuck on that first paragraph. What does that mean, "I knew what you were when I first saw you?" My last email to him had been a whirlwind catch up on my life and romances - in a word, chaos - and I think he meant it to be grounding. And it is, I suppose, the idea that someone could know you so well so early - because he did.

He was the kind of friend that could calm whatever storm I drudged up. While others put on literal pounds with the freshman fifteen, I put on emotional weight that first year of college. I ended my high school relationship, bounced around as the bell of the (later determined to-be) mostly gay conducting ball, was charmed by a less-than-honest Canadian, entered my second cycle of clinical depression, nearly failed my first and last college math class and somehow came out on the other side with a rocker boyfriend who adored C.S. Lewis as much as I did, and made up for all the flailing I'd done throughout the year.

But my best friend, well he'd expected to be the knight at the end of that tunnel of a year, and while he managed fine seeing me flip flop about throughout - he knew the real deal when he saw it in the end. When my relationship started, he took his distance and I'd say our recent string of emails is the closest we've been to the magic of that friendship since.

He no longer needs me to be anything beyond the simplicity of the person he knew and recognized so early on. I need more than anything to be recognized as that very girl, because I'm still not ready for "him," whoever "he" might be, though I'm inching closer, every day. It's damn refreshing and delightful, to say the least.