Everyone says you’re lucky to find a best friend that becomes like family, but I think it’s the other way around, and you’re lucky if you have a family member who is your best friend. From the day we were born, I don’t remember a day where my twin sister, Ella, hasn’t been my person. The person I go to when I need to rant, cry, tell something to or even when I’m bored and want to go grab coffee. There’s no other person who I can laugh as hard or as much with even if it can be at the most inappropriate of times. She’s always been the person I go to to the point that my friends know she has, is and always will be a priority over everyone and everything.

          As we began, transferred and grew up in high school, nothing was ever too big of a challenge because I knew without a doubt she had my back. Transferring from Kennedy High School only went as well as it did because our first semester at Xavier, sophomore year, she let me tag along with her and talk to her friends in the hallways when I was too quiet to make any close friends of my own. Junior year, she’d help me with school work and wouldn’t even bat an eye when I asked, even if it was 12 a.m. the night before a chemistry test and she had to teach me a whole unit because she pays attention more than I do. Finally, we get to senior year and I look at her and still question how she manages to get every single thing for school done when senioritis has hit everyone else.           

          To Ella, thank you for being my built in best friend, the one I count on, the one who makes me the best version of myself. No matter what you do or where you go in life, as we continue to grow up and move on from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I’ll have your back like you’ve had mine for the past 18 years.