46. Abby

"Here's the thing: The animal kingdom loves toughness.
The tough ones survive.
The tough ones become leaders.
The tough ones get the resources.
The dainty fragile ones die off.
I'm done with society telling us we need to be fragile when natural selection says be anything but."

-Abby

She has a fair face but she is all muscle. At 27, she can stomach a half marathon and is training to teach yoga, but her strength is more internal than anything else. You might judge her for the mere fact she cried over the paint colors in her house, but you didn't see the stone look in her eyes as she implored her alcoholic father to attend her wedding.

Half her "friends" will comment on how beautiful she now is, but I loved her as "Abitha T" and  the more hurtful middle school taunt the kids used to yell down the halls. When the nerds are nerds because their homes are broken, they cling like leaves to a breezy tree. We kept one another warm in the coldness fate gave us, and as adults we healed together and thus became the same at heart.

In those days, I loved her like I loved being eleven and trips to get Slurpies. I love her now as a skydive wearing a super hero shirt with me, like long car rides and iced coffee. I love her in the way she flips the mirror to say

"Look Darlin, those parts you think are ugly are quite pretty after all."

When your connection exceeds sisterhood and all the promises you kept as kids.

She is my blessed neutral, my link to sanity. In this crazy world, no one knows me as me, quite like she does.

We will swear while watching hockey. We will swoon over graying men. We will still giggle over jokes that are rounding two decades old. With her, my sensitivity is my strength, my audacity is beautiful, my resilience is golden, and I see the same in her.