On today, April 12th, my dog and best friend of 15 years, Sasha, was put to sleep. We noticed she had been sick for a while but she still maintained her same energy and pour out her love to us in the same way as always. However, my good girl was misdiagnosed and what turned out to be cancer was looked over and eventually spread. Today, my family came to a decision that it was best to put her to sleep rather than to have her suffer through the pain of this terminal illness.

the goodest girl ever

I called my mom when I realized what was happening. My brother video called me and allowed me to be there with her in her final moments. The entire time, I was sitting in the bathroom of the Ethington Theater lobby crying my eyes out and hoping that no one walked in. After this call ended, i walked out into the lobby and rushed past everyone in order to prevent people from noticing that I had just been crying and was desperately trying not to do so again. However, I realized that I can't go through something like this alone. I had been so worried about bothering people with my problems that I didn't realize that I had friends who cared about me enough to no be bothered by said problems. Therein lies the point of this post.

Within this group of people was my friend Victoria Nay. After receiving words of comfort as well as numerous embraces, Victoria got up from where she was sitting in the group, came over to me, and hugged me. This may not seem significant to anyone and I do not know how significant it was to her, but it was important to me for a number of reasons. See, the thing about Vic is that her lowest love language is Physical Touch. She doesn't like it almost at all. With that being said, my highest love language is Physical Touch. So for her to cross that sort of "love language barrier" and hug me was an incredible example of someone showing truly how much they care about someone. Eventually, this got me thinking. How often do we go out of our way to show love to a friend?

Know your Love Language

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For those of you who may not know, love languages simply refer to the way in which a person demonstrates their love for another person. If you don't know your love language, I would suggest taking the time out to take a quick online test and learn it. The best thing about knowing your own love language and someone else's is that it helps to better understand that person. In situations like the one today, it helps understand how to comfort someone during a hard time or even show how much you appreciate that person.

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So I asked myself, how many of your friend's love languages do you know? This question is important in a number of ways. For one, how can I truly love my friends if I don't even know how they interpret love in the first place? If my friend does something I appreciate, I would naturally show my appreciation with a hug. However, is it fair to them if their lowest love language is physical touch? I feel like it really says something to me that I only show my affection and appreciation for people in my love language. In a way, it almost makes me feel selfish.

So I've made it my goal to learn to speak some of my friends' love languages. There are so many people in my life that do so many things for me. They deserve to be loved in a way they can appreciate.

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