I was a lonely kid. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the truth. I was weird, outcasted, and I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t really mind – I’ve always been good at entertaining myself.

This isn’t a story about how terrible and tragic my childhood was, though. It’s about how my life has evolved since then, and how I met my best friends – the two most important people in the world to me. On first inspection, they could probably be related; they both sport gray-blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, though Darla has blue streaks in hers. Darla is 5’8” and Chance is … god, I don’t know, like 6’2”? I’m right in the middle, at 5’11”. Naturally, I have dark hair and dark eyes, so I’m kind of the odd duck. It’s okay, though.

If you know me at all, you know that my life from birth up until around 13 years of age kind of sucked. My mom was negligent at best, and had a string of mediocre, and at times, awful boyfriends. When I was 13, in October of my 6th grade year, I met a girl. Crazy, right?

No; I met Darla Anne Wilson. She approached me in our shared gym class because she’d been talking to someone who had a crush on me at the time, and they taunted her, saying that, “...at least you don’t know who I like!” Needless to say, she did. We like to joke that our friendship was born of spite.

Darla and I met at a critical time in my life. About a year after we met, I moved out of my mom’s house and into my grandparent’s house. I had reached a point at which I couldn’t function with my mom and her husband, and, quite frankly, if I had remained, I might have run away or worse. Darla was there with me for all of that, and I’ll never be able to tell her how much that meant to me. She was my first good friend, and our relationship is past that, now. I think she’s like my platonic soulmate.

The second person in the aforementioned pair is Chance; we met later in my life, but he’s no less important to me. We met in school when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. The way we met is also kind of hilarious. I don’t know why, but I seem to be a magnet for interesting first impressions. I was sitting at a table during lunch with my earbuds in, reading a book. I looked up to see him, sitting at the next table over, staring at me. I went back to my book, thinking that if I ignored him he would go away. When I looked up again and he was still there, I asked, “Can I help you?”

He responded with, “I’m seducing you.” And thusly, a friendship was born. Iconic, truly. Chance is one of the funniest, most insightful people I’ve ever known. He’s changed a lot, since we met, and so have I.

Both Darla and Chance have stayed with me and proven their loyalty despite my countless trespasses. I adore them. And I think – I hope – that they feel the same about me.

They’re friends now, too; they’re similar in a lot of ways and wildly different in others. They both adore Batman, and because I don’t care much about DC, they talk about it together. They’re both weirdly good at niche math – Chance’s ballistic calculations are mind-boggling, and Darla is insane at algebra. I might just be impressed because I’m god awful at math. I’m glad they get along. I don’t know what I would do if they didn’t.

They’re both such wonderfully interesting people, and they’re both so special to me and just in general. I could go on about them for days. Tell you about how Darla and I read Homestuck together. And, just a sidenote – don’t read it. Trust me. I could go on about Chance’s limitless knowledge of firearms – seriously, he’s so smart. About how Darla and I go to Incredible Pizza every year on her birthday and get photostrips, and how she has hardly changed in five years but I look like a different person in every picture. There’s so much to say.

I can’t say everything though. I can only hope I gave you a solid glimpse into how fantastic these two are. Everyone deserves to feel this loved and to love others in return. There’s no price you could put on the unconditional platonic adoration I have for my pals. I don’t have a lot of friends, but I would die for the ones I have.