Picture It

We'll find a quiet place where we can talk and share our dreams. We'll browse through bookshops, stop at a cafe and call it day. We'll take a road trip to a destination we've always wanted to visit and stop at a roadside diner where we'll befriend a waitress who insists that we try their blackberry cobbler. We'll accumulate hundreds of friends in common on Facebook within a matter of months, and they'll become our unofficial family.

We'll develop the ability to read each other's minds but never assume what the other is thinking. We'll learn to communicate fully and be honest with each other. We'll tell each other things only a few know - or no one knows. We'll always have our respective best friends but will ultimately be each other's best friend.

We'll be invited to birthday parties and social events, and when one of us can't make it, questions will be asked, speculations will be made. We will each act as a bookend to an ampersand, yet we will not be attached to the hip indefinitely.

We'll have movie dates and healthy debates over a filmmaker's intentions, an actor's convincing portrayal. We'll have impromptu lunches during the work week and canceled dinners which will eventually be reconciled. We'll renovate a room together. We'll turn sweet nothings into a habit. We'll accumulate photos along with memories that can't be contained within a singular snapshot. We'll be each other's In Case of Emergency.

We'll drive downtown to try the Best Milkshake in Town. We'll show our support and buy tickets to a friend's play and give him false praise after the show is over. We'll scold one another for buying something out of our price range and quickly get over it with a "We deserve it anyway." We'll travel out of state and visit friends we haven't seen in years and exclaim how time just flies by. We'll travel to Europe and buy exotic accents to litter the living room and show off to everyone who drops by. We'll host a dinner party in honor of a friend who's had a rough year. We'll put up with out-of-town family members whenever they come to visit. We'll open our couch to the friend who has hit a rock bottom and has no where else to go. We'll entrust our next-door neighbor with a key to the front door in case "something happens."

We'll fight over the Usuals: money, career decisions and conflicting schedules. We'll be challenged to question each other's trust. We'll be strengthened by the trust we'll eventually regain. We'll fill our heads with What Ifs. We'll dream about alternate realities in which there is no We. We'll appreciate the blessings we've been given. We'll inspire each other and make each other proud.

We'll wish we did things differently, yet come to realize we wouldn't have changed a thing. We'll start to treat each moment of the mundane as something extraordinary. We'll surprise each other and still fulfill each other's expectations. We'll learn that respect is easy and commitment is hard. We'll learn more from each other than we could have possibly imagined.

You'll have me. I'll have you.

But we haven't met each other yet.

H.P.M.