10/11, no. 55

To one of my oldest and closest friends, to the most driven and dedicated girl I know, to the one I know I can always have fun with: today you are eighteen, a number in which society has injected significance. It means you've got all these new governmental rules, rights, circumstances, etc...but like any birthday, no real change is ever felt immediately.
But I see change. It's been a pleasure watching you grow to where you are now, a state of oxymoronic immature maturity.
On day one we were frazzled sixth graders attempting to get to our lockers, and my biggest stress in the world was part of my backpack was stuck in someone else's lockers, so as I became increasingly freaked out, you gave me a pair of scissors to cut it off. I remember this very vividly.
In seventh grade we lucked out and landed in the same math class and we thought we were the shit because we passed notes all the time without getting caught. Ten bucks Ms Wassel knew what we were up to the whole time. We thought we were cool because we were older than the genius sixth graders in that class, yet we were such idiots.
Freshman year we became excruciatingly close friends, sharing all our secrets about boys in cross country. I always looked up to you, because while I struggled to keep up with my grade in Biology, you were excelling; while I could barely run a 6:30 min mile, you were racing to the sub-6 zone.
Thank you for everything you've done. Quite honestly you're the last person I'd find inspiration in - you pile yourself with academics, you rarely sleep, you stress out nonstop - and yet you're the closest friend I'm motivated by. We're so alike and it's so reassuring to know we'll always have each other, even if we get so caught up with life that we forget to even speak to one another for weeks.
Happy birthday, Michelle. I know school is hard and neither of us are completely settled in socially, but I'm glad we can go through hard shit together.