This is the post where Mel goes a little soft. And apparently speaks in third person simultaneously. (Okay, I’m stopping the third-person narration now.)

I am, without a doubt, absolutely lucky to have more high-quality friends than I can count on my fingers.

This statement isn’t meant to be arrogant. It’s mainly because I’m ridiculously undeserving and I like to remind myself of that from time-to-time.

And it wasn’t until I received a picture-text from one of my closest friends and favorite people ever that I wised up.

I’ve always been a quality-over-quantity type of girl (and I’m not saying that because it’s commendatory—I don’t rightly give a fuck about characteristics that cultivate compliments—I’m saying it because it’s the truth). I only really keep in contact with the people I want to keep in contact with, which may make me an asshole in some cases, but I shrug them off.

I’ve totally made a few friendship flubs here and there—but who hasn’t? That’s how you learn—you analyze your mistakes in combination with others’. But while fallouts were all mentally digested, I don’t necessarily still talk to ex-friends (I honestly still deem them “crazy-ass bitches.”)

A typed-up, meant for snail-mail-but-sent-via-picture-text is the best letter of all!

Anyways, so I read this letter from my friend. She passed on post-college-graduation-advice to me and radiated how proud she was of me, and said how one day I will “do great things and that’s a fact,” and I swear to God I nearly sobbed my eyes out.

That’s when I realized that, fuck, I have friends who have my back just as much as I have theirs, who actually truly give a fuck about my wellbeing and my life and genuinely want the best for me (and vice-versa).

This certain genre of friend is hard to come by. It’s rare and coveted.

It’s almost like solid gold in that it’s prone to malleability yet highly valued. (Only, it’s not found in the insides of contemporary rappers’ mouths.)

I have friends from elementary, middle, high school, and college who I routinely don’t talk to for months and months because our schedules don’t align or because we have new groups of friends and we’re busy creating new memories, or just because we have “big kid jobs” that tire us the fuck out.

But when we finally do catch up—and we do—two hours have passed by and we’re crying from laughing and massaging our faces because our jaws are sore.

And when the conversation finally starts to wind-down, there’s the remnants of an understanding there—a real kinship—that it’s a tried and true friendship and these “catch-ups” are never-ending.

Corniness and clichés are taking over me, but I do not care. Le sigh.