For anyone who has that one really good friend (or more than one) who’s almost like your other half, like your soul-friend, was it like love at first sight (for lack of better words)? I just keep thinking about how my best friend and I pretty much instantly clicked and I wonder if that’s how a lot of people feel with their best friend/s.

Maybe it makes a difference when it’s someone who has gone their whole life, up to now, without having a true friend. That was my case until I met Lauren last year. She’s the first person who really gets me and is so like me it’s completely nuts. What’s even crazier, though, is the fact that it just hit both of us. As if we knew right away that we were going to be close. Am I the only one who has experienced this?

Well, whether or not it’s unique, I do wish I could have found someone, anyone, I could have been good enough friends with to have some sort of support before college. It might sound impossible, but I truly had no friends until I graduated from high school. I maybe had a few when my classmates and I were too young to know the difference between what was cool or not, but once junior high hit, I was very lonesome. This meant I also wore a huge target on my back.

I actually watched a video on popularity and social cruelty in middle school for an education course the other day, and it’s been found that as long as kids have one friend, they are much better off than the students who have no friends going through school. They say that if your child has no friends, you need to find them help, because they are also going to be a frequent victim of bullying.

Well, you can probably put two and two together. I too was a victim of bullying. I got picked on and abused and even got sexually harassed a few times, but I’m not afraid to say it anymore, because not only has it made me who I am, but I know there are kids out there who have gone or are going through way worse than anything I received growing up.

I say it now because it needs to stop. The suicides of children constantly being told that they aren’t good enough need to stop. These kids need a friend.

I’ve been blessed to have my fiancé, Zac. He alone has helped with the depression and anxiety and overall post-traumatic stresses from those 12 years of my life.

But having Lauren is something I can’t put into words. All we do is go out every Wednesday. We go to the bar, sit at someone’s place and watch movies (or we just sit and talk).

It doesn’t matter what we’re doing or where we are. It sounds weirdly like a romantic relationship, but like I said, I’ve never had a good friend like this.

But I do know that I wish every friendship for everyone could be this natural. Just two kids, hanging out, completely carefree with each other and no worries about being judged or ridiculed.

I have finally found my friend and I hope everyone can find theirs. But most importantly, I hope everyone can try to be a friend. You never know, you just might be making a world of difference for the person who doesn’t have one.