From the time I was really young, I knew that my friendships would be everything to me. I was born into a family of predominantly men. Outside of my two grandmothers, my mom and my aunt, I was it. Finally a girl. A granddaughter. A niece. A mother’s best friend. I love my mom endlessly, but in the early stages of my life, she was definitely my mom and whether or not she’d crossed over to the friend category in her mind, I didn’t recognize her in that role until much later in life. It would be years before our relationship blossomed into what it is today.

I always wanted a sister. As a little girl, I dreamed of my parents having another little girl. I took notice of sisterly bonds very early on. Maybe it was being separated from my boy cousins at family functions. Maybe it was rooms being claimed as “boys only” or being unable to sleep in the same living room during sleepovers, because I was a girl. Maybe it was the endless conversations about sports and video games that often went over my head. Whatever it was, I longed desperately for another little girl to connect with, to play in the same room with, to keep secrets from the boys with. The true dynamics of sisterhood wouldn’t present themselves until much later in life, but from what I could see as a child, having a sister was having an instant friend. My grandma had two sisters, my nana had one and so did my mom. And it seemed that in all three bonds, conversation happened daily and happened deeply.

There must have been a mental shift when I realized a sister wasn’t in the cards for me. And somewhere along the way, I went from desiring a sister to hoping for a “best friend.” Ahh, “best friend.” That term was my anchor…for years. Making friends was a way to fill the void of not having a sister. Making friends was a way to feel important…to feel needed. Making friends gave me a place at the table, when I didn’t always feel like I had a place in my family of boys. In pre-school, I had “best friends.” From kindergarten to 3rd grade, I had a “best friend.” When I transferred schools in 4th grade, I made new “best friends.” I was 10 when my older brother met his girlfriend/future wife. Finally, there was a glimmer of hope. But she came from an incredibly large family filled with aunts and female cousins. She had a sister annnd she’d had the same “best friend” since the third grade. Our needs wouldn’t align for many, many years, so my hunt continued. I had middle school “best friends” who graduated into my high school “best friends.” There were the “best friends” that came at the start of my journey into adulthood. And there were even a few “best friends” that spanned many or all of those seasons.

Like one I met in 5th grade. She and I were connected at the hip. It helped greatly that we lived only 3-4 blocks from one another so weekend sleepovers became a regular occurrence. Our lives paralleled in many ways and looking back, I believe we both had a deep longing to feel needed by someone else. She was that for me. My very best friend. I was the sugar, she was the spice. We spent all of our time together digging to know each other more and more. We intertwined with each other’s families, baby-sat and house sat together, took spontaneous weekend road trips, and made up cutesy little nicknames for each other. We went to different schools, but they knew “us” at each campus. For years, we came as a package deal – you hardly saw one without the other. She filled my bestie cup for almost a decade, but along the way, life pulled us in two separate directions. And without really understanding how to cope to such a massive change in our dynamic, I put a band-aid on it and attempted to push forward to fill the void again.

I met my next “best friend” when I was 18. Completely unexpected, but so needed for the seasons of life I was up against during my early adult years. We worked together and almost immediately upon meeting her, she opened her entire life to me, her home, her family. And I latched on quick. She had sisters (!!!), and girl cousins, and a family that welcomed people with big ol’ open arms. I often spent so much time at her house that when I went home, I had to remind her family that I had a family of my own. I spent most of my late teens/early 20’s at her house and I remember one night specifically when she shared with me that she’d prayed to God for a true and loyal friend and then she met me. (Gulp). Yep, those words pierced my heart. No one had ever said that to me before. Of course from then on, she held the crown. We became inseparable. She knew all sides of Monique – the good, the bad and the ugly. She was the very first person I called when my grandma passed away. I’ll never forget crying “she’s gone!” into the phone and knowing that she was hugging me through the phone. She sat with me on my granddad’s office floor as I finished writing my eulogy, not saying much but just being there. And while she was present for so many incredible, life-changing experiences, every time I think back to those really tough seasons of life – my grandma’s passing, my granddad’s passing, my poppa’s passing, my doggy’s passing – all the seasons when my heart was absolutely shattered into pieces, I see her enveloped in those memories. She was family to me. She was the sister I’d always dreamed of.

But things changed, pretty drastically, when I made the decision to move to Las Vegas and finish school. The distance really changed the bonds I shared with all of my friends, especially my “best friend.” I became selfish, expecting a lot more of our friendship than I felt I was receiving. At the core of my hurt was a deep desire to want to share my entire college experience with her. More than anything, I wanted what was important in my life at the time to be important to her too. And because it clearly wasn’t, I built up a lot of hurt and resentment. Over the next few years, I became more and more negative. I was bitter. And our friendship became a roller coaster. Ups and downs galore, bouts of not speaking and a jealousy on my part that I couldn’t seem to shake. My emotions rooted in fear. Fear of being replaced. Fear of being forgotten. Fear of the unknown. My entire emphasis had been building and maintaining solid friendships and slowly, I felt like people kept trumping my presence in my friends’ lives. If it wasn’t a boyfriend now consuming all of their time, it was a husband, a child, or another friend. It was hard feeling plucked out of their one and only “BFF” slot. I knew a part of me was being selfish, but the other side of me felt like a child crying out for love and attention. So, I did what I knew best. I isolated. I distanced myself. I was hopeful that retracting would highlight my cry for attention. And who knows, maybe it did. But for the first time, I didn’t seem to notice its effect. For the first time, my distance with people seemed to push me closer to Jesus. My distance with people didn’t push me into depression and thoughts of unworthiness like they had in the past, they pushed me into more conversation and more prayer, more journaling and more dreaming. And in Him, I found my “best friend.” In Him, I found a purpose in Las Vegas (there’s a whole story there…). I was on the path of finding myself again. I found a bit of clarity. And in that clarity, I decided to move back home and face my mountains head on.

I’d love to say that when I moved home, I had really open and vulnerable conversations with each of my friends and mended relationships left and right. But I won’t. Because that didn’t happen. In fact, life hit me pretty hard when I returned and I remained in isolation for months, never really filling that “best friend” role again. I continued to grow in my faith. I threw myself into work to mask the need for relationship. I worked from home so keeping the distance from people was pretty easy for me. I shifted my focus to simply making it through tough seasons. Alone.

About a year and a half had passed before I found myself ready to get back out there and try the whole human interaction/friendship thing again. I had all my walls up. And first and foremost, I vowed to chuck the term “best friend.” Like I said, that term had been my anchor for years. That term was rooted as the answer to all of my unmet need. That term wrecked me emotionally. That term created unattainable expectation of those closest to me. I spent years forcing people to love me on my terms, based on my needs, meeting my expectations, only to be left feeling even emptier and even more alone. So I kicked it to the curb altogether. My prayer was simply to connect with people that I could fully do life with.

It didn’t come quick either. And I backslid a few times. Crawled back into isolation and pulled away from people who simply loved me in a different manner than I expected them to. Each time I distanced myself from people, I was reminded of my revelation in Las Vegas. Reminded of the space I needed to create to allow a conversation with my “best friend.” A lot of prayer. A lot of stepping outside of my comfort zone a.k.a placing myself in situations with other people! People who I could meet. People who I could interact with. People who I could begin to know. I started serving on a ministry team full of nothing but men – literally, I was the only female on the team. There must have been something attractive about childhood days surrounded by all of my boy cousins. But as was the case during my childhood years, it wasn’t long before I began longing for females to connect with. It wasn’t long before I started praying for my next opportunity to connect with women. Women who love, give, and care without expectation. Women who share without walls, trust without fear, and listen without judgement. Women who speak in love. Women who create a smile with their mere presence or know just what to say to trigger a belly laugh. Women who challenge growth outside of comfort zones. Women who push each other to do better, be better, and live better. Women who accept the past, meet the present and push towards what is laid out ahead. Women who pray fervently through a storm and cheer others down the road to their God-anointed purpose. Women who like to have fun. Women who value experience. Women who crave similar connections, desiring to “fully do life” with other women, creating space and intentionally making time for meaningful relationship. It sounds like a lot, I know. But deep down, I think a lot of women are praying for the same thing. Because that’s in the make up of who we are. All of humanity is wired for connection. Wired for relationship. Wired for love. But us women? I like to think we have some super special micro-chipped wiring that craves vulnerability and longs to be empowered and uplifted in a loving and feminine nature, one only expressed through deep and intimate relationship with other women.

It’s been almost two years since I jotted that prayer down. And even though I see some pretty shiny examples in my life right now of this answered prayer, I never want to take it for granted. I never want to get so comfortable in the blessing of friendship that I forget to express my gratitude for the relationships in my life. And I share that gratitude often with my bestie – Jesus. He’s pretty much claimed that open slot for, like, the rest of my days.