To the one who pushes herself to the brink,

I would like to acknowledge how gorgeous you are, inside and out. I believe everyone in the world should have a person such as you in their lives, and I pity those who do not. You should have all the confidence in the world as to who you are as a person and the successes you will have in your future, but somehow you do not. You do not see how amazing you are, and I would like to show you in how many ways you are phenomenal.

There is no way I could possibly ever understand how you balance all of your activities and still achieve phenomenal grades and scores in school. You regularly participate in community services, attend weekly competitive dance classes, Tae Kwon Doe and manage to be in approximately 500 different extracurricular school clubs. You are a real-life Wonder Woman, except for the fact that you are the clumsiest adolescent I know. I guess your serious imbalance disorder reminds me that you are still human, and not a mythical Amazonian comic character.

I recently got into your phone and saw your GPA. You told me not to tell anyone, and I hope it was out of sparing anyone for feeling insufficient, or your modesty showing going into overdrive because nobody on the face of planet earth should be embarrassed about your score. You have worked hard everyday for your grades and you deserve your GPA to be so high. Due to your over-packed schedule, you have been up to the crack of dawn working on assignments and studying for upcoming assessments. I, on the other hand, only have to blame procrastination on my late nights and poor grades.

I talked to one of your friends from camp this summer, and we gossiped about you. We discussed how gorgeous you are, and although you are brilliant, you are dumb for not acknowledging your beauty. We, and everyone else, believe that you can do anything that you set your mind to, and if that means you want to go to Columbia, well, you are for sure getting into your dream school. Maybe you do not want to be let down if you tell yourself you can get into your Ivy league dream, but like in all of Coach Buckley's mini pre-game essays, you have to believe you can, and you will.

You push me to do better. One time toward the end of sophomore year, you walked to my house with me. You listened to all of my anxieties about college, and the fact that I still had to write my entire research essay the day before it was due. You made me walk upstairs to my room, and after you saw the atrocious state of disaster it was in, you stayed with me for two hours until dinner cleaning my room. You, my dear, are the craziest person I have ever met. Although I did not end up finishing my paper on time, you were there every step of the way making sure I would not have a full-blown panic attack. I put that burden of the essay upon myself, but you graciously took a load off by comforting me and pushing me to focus, and for that I thank you.

Although I love your drive and the lengths you push yourself to, please remember you have limits. You have boundaries that maybe you are not meant to break. We went on a road run last year, and although you wanted to finish the course, you were not meant to that day. You had a serious asthma attack where you almost passed out. You scared me. You kept saying, you just had to finish the run, but we had to sprint the rest of the course to get help. I felt bad for leaving you behind, and even by the time I got to the coaches to tell them about you, Coach Misko had already rushed to find you. Please, talk to someone and tell them something is getting to be too much, and not the moment before it overwhelms you. Remember this is not only applicable to your health, but also in any of your millions of activities.

I aspire to be like you, and sometimes I find myself undeserving of your friendship. I can sit on my bed and write to you about how you have to have confidence in yourself, when I do not even have confidence in me. I do not hold confidence in my friendships when I should, and panic when I think people are forgetting about me or they do not consider me as much as a friend I consider them to be. I believe you are one of my best friends, and I hope I can keep you around in my life for as long as possible. Maybe you will leave me behind in your dust as you grow to be some UN representative, or president of wherever (I would vote for you), but I pray you do not forget about me along your road to stardom.

I hope I have helped to better your life as you have significantly improved mine, and I can not thank you enough for that. You have been there when I needed you, and I hope you find yourself looking for me when you need help. Maybe I can not help you with your AP Physics or AP Art History homework, but I know I can help to be there to listen when you need to vent or talk about anything.

You are gorgeous both inside and out. I believe everyone in the world should have a person such as you in their lives, and pity those who do not. You should have all the confidence in the world as to who you are as a person, and the successes you will have in your future, but somehow you do not. You do not see how amazing you are, and I think you are perfect in every shape and form.

I can not thank you enough for being in my life.

Love,

Margaux