The girls that I hang out with (not so often) would pick on me for hanging out with guys more than them, for liking video games, and Marvel, DC, comic books, sports, and things that a ‘girly-girl’ should not enjoy. Now, I am by no means a girly-girl. I am a female, yes. But as a female, I don’t have to wear 6 inch heels and dresses and have my hair curled or straightened or my makeup perfect. I wear sweats and tank tops half the time. I walk barefoot, basically everywhere I go there are no shoes on my feet. My best friend of 7 years always told me to be yourself. And in middle school, I got into my first relationship. It lasted 3 months, but then he started acting strangely towards me. He told my best friend to stop talking to me and wouldn’t ALLOW me to to talk to him. I still did, my logic was ‘I am my own person, you do not own me, I am not your property, you are not my father, etc etc.’ I kept hanging out with my best friend. he would come over almost every weekend and we’d play video games, listen to the newest albums that had just been released, and shoot our airsoft guns. Well, the guy I was ‘dating’ found out and broke up with me. I walked 2 miles to my best friend’s house crying the entire time. We went to 7/11 and we got slushies and he told me, that one day I will find a guy that treats me better than I can ever dream of, that it might suck now, but it was for the best, that he didn’t care for me enough unless he tried to make things work. Then he said, ‘You never know, the person you’ve been looking for might live right down the road...’ I had my first kiss that night, it was awkward and we didn’t ‘spark’ but we are still friends. We grew up together and people always ask ‘Are you a couple?’ Or the infamous ‘you guys should date/ I SHIP IT!’ He’s a brother to me, but he means more than that. He may not be a blood relative, but he was there for me when my adopted mother, brother, and father were not. He’s the best thing that EVER happened in my life. He’s the reason I stopped self-harming and thinking about suicide. He knew that I knew it wasn’t the answer. I just needed a reminder once in a while...