Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair

Literally- literally- the instant I hit "publish post," my best friend texts me. I should never say that "I have nothing exciting going on in my life to report," because it's like the universe and God want to prove me wrong.

My friend has been up in the Bay area for a month, and I have missed her terribly. There were a few reasons she left L.A., including (but not limited to) her family (she grew up in the suburbs of San Francisco) and her boyfriend (he works up there, they've been doing the long-distance thing for one year out of the two they've been dating- I introduced them, I take full credit, thank you very much).

I've been holding out hope and secretly praying that something happens to make her come back here. Perhaps she moves in with the boyfriend and he turns out to be a slovenly wreck. Perhaps her entire family decides to up and move to L.A. (fat chance). Something. Anything.

But no.

She has been offered a job up in the Bay area.

She is abandoning me.

This is atrocious.

I'm going to be left with very few friends at the rate this is going! What if I'm left with no one but the Frenemy??

My other best friend (I have two, plus one sister) is going to start her master's next year, probably in San Francisco (what is the appeal of that city, people?? STAY HERE!), at which point I will be inconsolably bereft.

Depressing thoughts, far too heavy for a Tuesday afternoon while the hills around L.A. are burning down.

I'll have my sister and my mother, and even the Frenemy, if she ever decides to start speaking to me again (still no word on that front). My two best friends, though, will not be here.

I don't know what "best friend" means to guys, but for girls, it's a sacred title. Okay, not "girls," but really "me."

I'm a great acquaintance. I'm good at organizing parties, corralling people in restaurants and bars, and making inane small talk at concerts. Several couples have met because I introduced them to one another or they were at a party that I invited them to. (You know what they say, the shoemaker's daughter runs around barefoot?- the matchmaker's always single.)

But I'm not good at making real friends. Real, lasting, "be a bridesmaid when I get married" friends. I have one for life, one that I will never doubt- my sister. Growing up with someone just a year younger than me provided me with a lifelong cohort, for which I am eternally grateful. I really do feel sorry for my parents- I was only six months old when my mother got pregnant again! Because of their suffering, however, they gave us a closeness that a bigger age gap may have made impossible. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

I didn't meet my best friend (that still lives here for the moment- incidentally, we're living together this week) until college. We were two of the very few girls majoring in animation, and while we weren't fast friends (I thought she was crazy, she thought I was boring), we became very close friends, able to complete each other's sentences and generally thinking the same things at the same time.

(Weird that if I had said the above about a boy, it would have been gag-inducing, yet when it's about best friends, no violent physical reaction.)

That was back in (gulp) 2000, and we've stuck with each other through the drama and insanity for the past nine years.

My best friend that's moved far, far away to the cold and foggy world of S.F. I met while we were both working on "The Golden Compass" three years ago. She and I ended up working together and living together- we didn't fight, still haven't fought. Amazingly drama-free.

Just thinking about being without these friends is making me feel vaguely nauseous and lonely.

Maybe I need a pet.