No one wants to feel like a second choice. Everyone wants to feel like they are a priority in someone's life. Everyone longs to have a best friend that also calls them their best friend. Everyone longs to have a friend group that they really fit into, and feel permanently a part of. Everyone wants to find those friends in life that make you feel like you have finally found "your people".

The reality is that it may take years to find this. For some people it seems like it comes so easily, so naturally. It seems like they have always had a best friend, or have always had that same friend group.

For me, it took 17 years, until I really found a best friend that I know calls me a best friend too, to find someone that understands me completely. Even though it's usually just the two of us, that is our "friend group".

I'm the type of person who can make friends easily, and I always try to relate to someone or find something in common with them. I like establishing connections with others, getting to know them. I can make friends pretty easily, and I have a lot of friends, but I never felt like I had a "friend group" I was part of, or an actual best friend.

It always felt like everyone that I was friends with, or even considered to be my best friend, thought of someone else as their best friend. It always seemed like my friends had a concrete friend group, and I was just one of the token people outside of the group that they talked to. I used to hate feeling this way. I wanted a friend group, or a genuine best friend so bad.

I spent middle school and most of high school not really sure who I could call my best friend. I knew I wasn't in a friend group; I just floated around and had friends that were in groups that I wasn't a part of.

The summer before my senior year of high school, a girl who had just moved to my school from Guam joined the cross country team, which I was captain of. When I met her that morning in August, I had no idea that I would finally find that real best friend who I had been looking for all of my life. Even though we didn't have a "friend group", it was nice to finally have a best friend that also called me their best friend.

Although it took me 17 years to find someone I know I can consider a best friend, I am glad that it took as long as it did. It gave me time to focus on myself, and look at friendships from the outside.

It taught me that I can live without having a "best friend" or a "friend group". It taught me that I shouldn't want to be friends with someone that doesn't want to be friends with me. It taught me what a real best friend is, and it was worth waiting 17 years for.