The boy sitting in the back of class could be getting ready to go home to an abusive dad. The girl that's all pretty in pink who’s sitting up front is suffering from a terrible eating disorder. Your professor, the one assigning you homework and giving you exams, she just lost her mother to cancer that she had been fighting for 15 years. Everyone has their story.

We all have a friend who’s life is different then our own, possibly worse, and we just don’t know it. I want you to take a minute and think about your life, everything you’ve been through, and how you handled all of the rough patches in your life.

Now, are you happy with how you handled those events in your life? Most people will say they aren’t, which is completly normal.

There are so many things that I wish I could have handled differently throughout my life, because my best friend taught me throughout my junior and senior years of high school. She taught me more then she probably knows, and she taught me things without even having to say anything to me.

Never give up.

Since the day I met you, you have never given up your fight against epilepsy. Whether you were sitting in a hospital bed with gauze wrapped around your head or walking the track of your middle school to raise money to find a cure for this disease, there was never a moment that I felt you giving up. If you weren’t going to give up, then I knew that I should never give up. No matter what was going to happen.

You’re stronger then you think.

Just because you may be tiny does not mean your strength is just as small. Usually, the smallest people have the most strength. No matter what life threw at you, you were able to give it right back. Because of you, I know that no matter how deep rock-bottom may be, there is always a way to fight with all your might to keep your head above water.

Laughter is the best medicine.

For someone who has gone through everything you have, there isn’t anyone I know who can make me laugh harder then you do. You showed me that laughing instead of crying and smiling instead of sulking is the best way to remain hopeful that everything with be OK.

It could be worse.

You are sick, but so what? There are people in Africa who don’t get the air conditioning that we do. There are children in foster homes who don’t have the parents that we do. There are children who have lost their parents and parents who have lost their children. Because of you I was able to realize how beautiful my life is and that just because you may be going through something difficult, there is always someone out there who’s going through something worse.

Hope conquers.

Hope is a big word that is easy to say but hard to believe in. Your world is crashing down? They tell you to have hope. There is a difference then having hope and believing in hope and because of you I believe in hope. I believe that hope does conquer all, and I thank you for that.