I don’t say “I love you” to a lot of people.

My kids. My parents. I’ve said it to others, either because I meant it or because I thought I did. But aside from family relationships I’m pretty sure I’ve never loved anyone I wasn’t duty-bound to love.

Except my – what are the kids calling it these days? My bestie?

She’s so great. We were very different people when we met in 2001? 2002? Somewhere around there. We both went to school at Edinboro and were living in The Towers – one of the oldest, weirdest dormitories on campus. It was that awkward time when we all thought we were adults, because we were being treated like adults, but we still depended on things like meal plans and tuition refunds to really keep us going.

I guess it’s not that different now. Tax refunds are the same idea, if you get them. And now you’re just acutely aware of the fact that you’re paying for the food – and you have to cook it yourself.

But with great power comes great responsibility, I guess.

The first few years of college were a weird transition for me. I didn’t handle it with grace by any means. Nelly did, though. I remember standing at the elevator one morning planning to stop at a buddy’s van halfway to the psychology building for a cigarette before class. It was a moderate walk, all the way across campus, but diagonal from the dorm to the classroom, thanks to the goose-poop-laden path around the “fake lake” that stood between the student union and the psych building.

Yes, my buddy lived in his van.

No, I don’t want to talk about it.

The point is, I didn’t stop at his van that morning because there was no good way to do it. Nelly, who lived on the other side of my floor in the towers, but whom I’d never met, wandered up to the elevator in those anticipatory moments after you push the button to call it but before it arrives.

And she just started talking to me.

About joining a sorority.

I know. There is no logical reason why this chick and I should have become friends.

But she didn’t seem to realize that.

In fact, one of the things that I realize I like most about Nelly, to this day, is that she really doesn’t seem to care even one iota about what she’s supposed to be thinking or doing or feeling. I know she does, intensely sometimes, but she makes being assertive and self-assured look effortless.

Still, I remained cautious. Guarded. I answered her questions and just took her in as we made our way out of our dorm and through the gray drizzle, that was pretty much the default weather at Edinboro, toward the fake lake. Eventually, I realized that despite my social anxiety hoping she would, Nelly would not be turning toward the cafeteria or going to the student center for coffee. She wasn’t headed toward the library or the history and science area of campus, to the right of us. Nelly was headed to the psych building. Because, although I’d have bet the better portion of my refund check on the fact that she and I had absolutely jack and/or crap in common, it seemed we shared a major.

Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, passing my buddy’s van in the parking lot below the psych building and looking down at my wet sneakers on the glistening pavement, ashamed and guilty, hoping he’d missed me, that I’d been able to blend into the herd or just that he hadn’t been watching for me, and thinking of ways to explain why I hadn’t stopped should he ask.

This was just more…intriguing.

Nelly was gregarious and outgoing, wore makeup, and was naturally funny. She appeared impervious to shyness or awkwardness. I was the opposite of her, drastically, in all these facets of both personality and appearance.

But we just continued to see each other, naturally at first, since our schedules coincided at least every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Eventually, we started going out of our way to see each other on purpose. She and her roommate had to do most of the work, honestly, at first. It had been my experience that people tend to grow bored of people who don’t either entertain them or provide some service. Naturally, I’d had friendships throughout elementary school and beyond, but with personalities working to cement themselves, constantly changing or at least developing at that age, becoming more complex, those types of friendships are rarely lasting even in the best of cases. Because real friendship – what Aristotle would call a friendship of the good – requires each participant to give as much as they get, but also that each person involved truly like and respect the other.

Who knows what they truly like and respect until they’re, like, 30, right?

Except that even then, in my early twenties, I really liked and respected Nelly and over the years, as we worked through our Psychology coursework together, shared an apartment, left school – either properly, by graduating, or by giving up and dropping out – and then got married (years apart) and got pregnant with our first children (within two months of one another), she seemed to really like and respect me.

Neither of us has any reason to text each other, out of the blue, and yet we do. Regularly. Whether things are really good or really, really bad. Neither one of us has to end our conversations with “love you.” And yet we do.

Pretty much every time.

And neither one of us has to mean it. But I know I do and I’m pretty sure, at this point, she does too.

And looking back I know for a fact that everything about her that was so different from me is what I admired about her from that first morning walking to class. Her strengths are my weaknesses, and she has shown me how to be a better person, a better friend, and most meaningfully for me now, a better mom than I ever could have been without having a lasting friendship with her.

I don’t know what I provide the relationship. Probably an example of what not to do. Ever. And comic relief.

And I’m a-ok with that.