Our last summer together was full of ups and downs, mostly full of nonstop arguments and fights to whether she should leave to the army or continue the college path. It was a "cruel summer" like Taylor Swift described. She was my other half and I was left heartbroken, an emotional wreck. I knew the upcoming semester that awaited for me would be hard, perhaps the hardest and I wasn't so much worried about the schoolwork. The lack of communication with Erika would be the death of me, how do you go on with your life when you're emotionally, physically, verbally, attached to a person? My whole world revolved around this person...

You don't know how attached you are to a person until they're gone. Every detail of my life, every conversation, all my secrets would be communicated on a daily to this person and the same for her. They say don't kiss and tell, but your best friend doesn't count. It's not like she was my only friend, but she has always been the main one and no one will ever be able to take that spot. We balanced each other out in all areas of life, and we are each other's philosophers of life advice even though our experiences and lives are completely different.

When Erika left it made me realize that we were actually grown up and it was time to take different paths. You cannot cure the emptiness inside of you, and I don't it is ever cured until they come back. The first handwritten letter came in the mail and I wrote five letters in return. The boy stories, the new crush, the sadness inside of me; letters weren't long enough to inform her of everything that was going on in my life. When she wrote back about the new boy she liked from basic training it gave me a sense of peace that everything was going to be okay. She finally got her phone back the last week of the month of October and I saw that she was doing pretty okay and had made new friends.

I believe that time had to distance us to learn to be independent without one another. Whatever she would go, I would go... except this one time. She's living experiences and moments that I'm not part of, but hopefully, they become stories we laugh about 50 years from now sitting at a hospice room.

They say you don't know what you have until its gone, when I think of that sentence I think of us taking people for granted. My best friend didn't die, but I learned to miss her so much that it made me realize I appreciated her even more. The cover picture was taken our senior year at a Wishing Wall in Tempe, Arizona when we both dreamt and wanted the same things in life. Everyone's chapter at the age of 19 is different, but we can all agree on we are on the same boat. Especially after relationships and heartbreaks, whatever life throws at you your friends are always there to pick you up but at the age of 19, I have learned that sometimes you will have to cry alone in your car if your best friend isn't next to you.