Alana Rue

Alana and I have always had a tendency to match. We both wore our "Kooks" jackets to the first day of junior college. We wore the same black shirt, white camisole, jeans and sandals to my family's annual dinner. And on the night we met at Junior Winter Formal, we wore the same look of disappointment. 

Brought together by a mutual repulsion to our dates and a love for interpretive dance, Alana and I hit it off instantly. By the end of the night I felt like I had known her forever. Alana just has that ease about her. We spent every day of that following summer together navigating the sketchy streets of Los Angeles to see our favorite bands play, exploiting the local dollar movie theater, spending way too much time at the Coffee Bean, and staying up until all hours of the morning laughing. Our first summer as adults was refreshingly juvenile. We never had to be anybody but our awkward, star-obsessed, cheap selves.

Throughout college our friendship waxed and waned as we took on new jobs, new classes, and new friends. Every time we were together again, it was like sliding into an old pair of jeans. A perfect, comfortable fit. Over the past three years we have traveled, laughed, gotten in fights with our families, made plans, learned, fallen in love with orphans in Haiti, been baptized together, made new plans, been discouraged, and have supported each other the whole way through. 

The one thing that never matched were our plans for the future. I love to write and Alana is leaving to become a nurse. This parting of ways is inevitable and all together bittersweet. I know we'll always be close friends, but I can't help but feel like Tod watching Copper drive away in the back of pick up truck in The Fox and the Hound. 

Alana is sweet, loyal, kind, beautiful and gentle. She is warm to everyone she meets and is uniquely endearing. She is smart and brave and she always gives the best presents. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have had that terrible date in high school. It's funny how things like that work out. Alana Rue has changed my life and I will forever love her for it.

Alana, I've had the best days with you.