My best friend’s name is Jessie, and sometimes, especially lately, I feel like I’m friends with a celebrity. I’m not just talking about the people who follow her on Tumblr or Flickr, but in real life too people are just drawn to her and it’s simultaneously wildly inspiring and slightly discouraging, and I can admit that.
The thing is that when I met Jess, we were in the fourth grade. If you ask her, she’ll say it was the third grade, and that The Popular Girl introduced us by saying “Idan, this is Jessica, Jessica, this is Idan. You’re both Jewish!” and then smushing us together saying “Hug! Hug!”. And that’s why you should never ask her. Because when I met Jessie, we were in the fourth grade, and it was the week before holiday break, and our two classes got together for a party, and this girl drags me to her desk at the back of the room and shows me her dreidel collection, hoping to find a kindred spirit, but I just thought she was weird. I still played with the dreidels.
In fifth grade, we got really close, and in sixth we were in a musical show and during practice one day we got into a fight with one of the boys when his older sister and her friends threatened us, and we cried because we almost got a detention, and it was the worst day of our lives. In eighth grade I had my first kiss and Jessie was in the room and other than “his lips are really dry” all I could think was “Jessie is right there, what are you doing”. That year was also the year we went to meet Miley Cyrus, and we couldn’t be happier, and all through high school when we didn’t have enough classes together we would beg the guidance counselor to change our schedules so that we could at least have lunch.
In tenth grade Jessie started taking pictures, and I watched her completely transform into a different person. Really, it was awe-inspiring. at the end of junior year she and I and the few other friends we had made friends with another group, and started spending time with more than just three or four of us, and that was also around the time I made her watch all of LOST in six weeks. Every year we went trick-or-treating in her neighborhood, and now we go to school a thousand miles away from each other and we still talk every few days, and even though more memories are popping into my head by the second, I’m going to stop here, because I want to get to the point,
And the point is this:
No I will not answer your goddamn question about what the “tough time” is in her life. I don’t know if it’s one person or a few of you, but it is incredibly stupid of you to ask, so just stop it. This isn’t just a set of photographs and a blog, it’s a fucking person with feelings and a real life. I understand that you probably don’t have one, but that is your problem. Now kindly go fuck yourself. Thank you, and good night.
