i remember moving from atlanta in 2001 to tennessee. i left behind the best friends i ever had. i knew most of them for a total of three months before i left. for the next three summers, all seven of them would come and stay at my parents house. all of them. so it was eight of us. one room. one bed. no, no orgies or anything cuh-razy like that. we really were good kids. extremely good. probably too good. hell, i didn't know what masturbating was until the end of sophomore year of high school. each of us can probably be classified by our parents as "the easy ones."

as consecutive visits rolled by, and the four-day weekend of their visit was over, i remembered how close these seven people were to me, even if we really didn't talk that much. these days, some of us keep in touch better than others, but one person stands out in particular. after the first summer of their visit, the night of their departure from the house, i sat with my mom and told her, "i can honestly see myself marrying someone like Allison." my mom, realizing how naive and young i am, simply told me, "or someone you haven't met yet." she was right. years went on, the group stopped coming as we got older, but we still did our best to keep in touch. and we did. nearly ten years later i realize i have that person i've been looking for. i guess you never know. but i do. i can honestly say that i've found my soulmate; the one i want to be with. and it feels awesome. i don't feel like anybody else could possibly understand what it is exactly that i'm feeling. i am completely in love with my absolute best friend.

i think it's a pretty rare thing to find someone like that; someone who knows you in and out. i feel like relationships would be so much more successful if people would just stop looking so hard. i suppose that's what they say though: "you find the one when you're not looking," or whatever. for all of those people that have "the worst luck" with dating, quit trying so hard. a concern with dating a close friend of many years tends to be risking the friendship; you don't want to put your friendship with that person on the line. that's understandable. however, why risk an entire life of never knowing? if things start to get weird, stop before you're ahead. i think a big mistake is people feel it getting weird, but end up saying "screw it" and you know, screwing them anyways. don't make that mistake. wait for it. don't rush into a relationship with a good friend without testing the waters first. i just hate to see people unhappy with their relationships or unsuccessful in trying to make one work with someone they don't match up with. that's the end of my relationship advice. you can now call me delilah.