The hardest step she ever took was to trust in who she was. –Atticus

Goodbyes and farewells have never come very easy to me, especially with someone who means so much. Today I had to officially say goodbye to my best friend. In life we have many acquaintances, friends, best friends, and soul connections. Megan is my soul recognition. She is the one person who came in to my life slowly then all at once, ripping my soul wide open and making me question everything that I ever doubted about myself. Soul sisters to say the least. It’s not always who you’ve known the longest, it’s about who came like a whirlwind and proved their existence to you as such a blessing. She’s been in my life for 5 years and has walked with me through some of the toughest days of my life. We were always the two in our little coastal town that everyone loved to see walk into a room together. And when we weren’t together everyone asked where the other one was. We have similar interests, wanderlust spirits, and a kindred drive for life. She’s the one person that got me. She understands me and I don’t have to say a word. She always sees the tears even when I was smiling through them. She is the girl who understands my introvert soul and reads my eyes when she says “let’s go, you are done.” She’s the one person who I can call at anytime and she somehow always knows the very words to calm my soul immediately when nothing else could quite me down. We discovered more about ourselves than we ever thought we would in 5 short years here and we walked through some of the hardest days in our lives, as well as some of the stupidest decisions and happiest days. We laugh about them now and we love each other through it. I had the best year of my life with my best friend traveling the world and discovering ourselves. I laughed harder than I ever had and experienced more than what my whole being could comprehend at the time. We still speak of that year often, and wish we could live it all over again with spirits that were more free than we had ever encountered. So was saying goodbye to her today tough? It was added to the list of one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to walk away from. They always say that airports see more tears than most places and today I left a trail of tear stained carpets in that Ohio airport. Am I happy for her? You have NO idea! I am beyond proud of her. She lives on a quest to better her life constantly. And has endlessly pursued dreams that she is making come true. She has taught me so much, been an example to so many, and goodness am I proud of her. So with that said, it’s a bittersweet goodbye. A tough knowledge to face knowing that I won’t have her just down the street, or on those simple days and holidays when everyone else is with their families, we won’t be together celebrating on our own with our families hundreds of miles away. We were each other families in our little sleepy town. I can’t just call her and say “the skies lighting up, let’s go chase that sunset.” Or to have her sitting beside me making the funniest jokes you’ve ever heard where we laugh till our stomach aches. Goodbyes are a part of life. Ours, I just didn’t want to face but I didn’t have a choice today. Against what my will wanted to do, I ugly cried in that airport and I am still crying flying high above this US soil. It’s funny how you can push the things you don’t want to feel out of your head and your heart until the moment when you are forced to face it, then it all comes crashing down. She was my comfort zone and that one person who knew everything about me and loved me anyways. Nobody understood our relationship fully and how two women at our age could have what we had, but we all loved it. She was my one person. In life, we pursue and we grow and we move on to better ourselves. We have both chased our dreams and are in a heavy pursuit to never look back and regret what we could have done. Fear is a word that was never in our vocabularies and if it was, we quickly pushed each other to face the fear and conquer and that’s what I love about us. We push and motivate each other to chase our dreams. So here’s to 5 of the most amazing years of my life and lessons that can never be taken away from me. I am grateful and thankful that God gave me a soul sister to rip me wide open and give me a sense of strength that was buried deep within. Here’s to new adventures in new places around the world. I will meet you there sister!