Within the same four hours, during the same phone conversation, with the same person, I laughed, cried, discussed Rocky Horror Picture Show, the best bowl of chicken noodle soup in New York City, feminism, heteronormativity, and my "big gay wedding." I could only have a conversation like this with my Marty.

Marty, or Martin as others call him, is my best friend. We've been friends for ten years. We grew up together in those critical adolescent years. We did everything together. All of my pictures of him are old school, not digital, and I don't have a scanner. If I did, you'd see pictures of us in costumes from numerous shows, in formal wear from our annual symphony outing, with pink and blue hair sitting on the rainbow bridge in Broad Ripple, asleep on a huge rock in Central Park, and this June, we will vogue it up at my wedding.
There is a gap, though, in the photos. We had a rough patch that lasted from about my sophomore year of high school until last summer. Four years. I guess that's more than a "patch." It was almost half of our friendship. We spoke, but not about anything important. We went months with no contact. We both hurt one another, and it made me so sad to be losing him that I couldn't talk to him anymore. I wanted to lose him once and for all, so I didn't have to do it again every six months.
Last summer, I told him that. I said it was everything or nothing. That led to a conversation that lasted for hours, pulled over on the side of I-69, when the conversation got too heavy for the dashboard we were talking at. Basically, we realized that we had both gone through some personal shit---to make a drastic understatement--- and in an effort to ignore the problem, to make it less real, we didn't tell anyone; even each other. Had one of us been brave enough to talk about our trauma, we would have realized that we were both going through the same thing. We could have helped one another. But we didn't.
After last summer, things have changed. We are us again. We've dealt with out pasts...together, this time. We've made one another a priority. I asked him to be the man of honor in my wedding. I can't imagine having anyone else there with me. He constantly reminds me of...myself. He knew me before I grew into this person, when I was struggling with my identity. We helped one another define our morals, our beliefs. He knows me. And after years of struggling to define ourselves apart from one another, here we are again.