They are absolutely incredible, my friends and my family. It sometimes overwhelms me with genuine awe how incredible they are, but it also sometimes seems easy to forget how much they make a difference. Sometimes, it is easy to forget to say thank you.

In somewhat shameful honesty, it seems easy to take advantage of them, of everything that they do for me. I have simply become comfortable with the idea that they will always be here, and it almost saddens me at the thought of them not knowing the gravity of their presence, of their meaning to me.

And in careful thought, I have come to realize that at the end of the day, it comes down to them being there.

It comes down to the friends who will take you for drives without a destination in mind just to get away from everything for a while. It comes down to the friends who will text you and offer to order you food the day after you lose your grandma. The friends who will walk miles with you listening to you talk about everything.

It is the cousins that call you on your birthday and leave a voicemail with them singing a perfectly harmonized Happy Birthday. It is the dad who suggests that you go to Dairy Queen for dessert and lets you play your country music the whole way there and back. It is the cousin who sends you links to design and photography websites because she understands your honest passion for those fields.

These are the people that are worth the absolute world.

It is the friend that stays on the phone with you until you are home when you are walking alone. It is the friends who will smile at you without judgment as you cannot stop laughing for absolutely no reason. It is the friends who text you "guess what" whenever something exciting happens to them.

It comes down to having a mom that will answer your phone call every time you walk home from class alone. To having a brother that will check on you and sit and talk with you in the middle of a football tournament because you just got a call that your friend from home passed away. To having friends that surprise you with flowers and little notes when you are dealing with that loss.

It is the friends that will scream "High School Musical" songs in the car with you every Thursday night. It is the friends that look at your family as a second one to theirs.

It is the people that make wherever you are feel like home.

It comes down to the people. They are what matters.

Some of these may seem small, but these are the moments, these are the memories, that mean more than anything to me. At the end of the day, it comes down to having this kind of people in your life.