Dated 1/11/2008.

Dear Jess,

I feel like we’re getting old!  You just turned 23 a week ago and we’ve been best friends for over a decade now.  You’re getting your Master’s, I’ve been in the working world for a year… And yet I can so clearly remember the days of middle school, Girl Scouts, drill team, double dates at Trail Dust, and countless nights of staying up til 4am giggling and talking.  It seems like life was simpler then, doesn’t it?  Don’t get me wrong, you couldn’t pay me to go back.  God—the teen angst!  And more importantly, the acne!  It’s like all my memories are so tangled, though.  The things we thought were life and death back then are now so minute.
When did we change?
I’m sure it was so gradual–but it sure felt sudden, didn’t it?  Did you wake up one day drastically different?  Did I?
I’m so proud of you.  You are already everything you ever dreamed you could be.  So in this time of letters, this year of reflection and analysis of my life (and life in general), know that you are an inspiration to me.  You are the one who gave me this very journal I write in, the very source of this project!
You inscribed that I am “a woman who will inspire the world.”  I hope these words come to fruition and that I make you proud as well.
I look out the window every day and see so much world.  It’s so vast, how could I possibly be anything or anyone significant?
But I will try.  We are women, strong women, no longer those little girls under our sleeping bags with flashlights.
But, I don’t feel so different from that little girl sometimes.  Do you?
Love and miss,
Chris