Sometimes the ones you love will do you a favor and give pieces of yourself back to you.

They will forgive, and instead of forgetting, remember how hard times were, shake their heads, and keep loving you despite your tendency to be a fallible human being.

Someday I hope somehow says to you, "You know, I really wanted to hate you and stay angry, but I want to be your friend. I'm going to be your friend."

Every time I did something bad as a teenager, my parents would double-team in their disappointment/punishment of me. I hated it. It really was the only time I ever wished they were divorced. Alas, mind games that pitted one against the other were impossible. They were steadfast walls of "we raised you better." They also agreed that yard work was a very suitable task for someone as fussy, freckled, and scrawny as me. Notice I didn't say "melodramatic," which I assure you I was as a teenager. (Big surprise, right)? Had my parents known the depressing poem I was composing in my head called "Godforsaken Rake Of My Soul" or that I wanted to run out in front of a train to at least stop the callouses from forming on my fingers, they'd have put me in the house on floor scrubbing duty.

The return to normalcy was so sweet. My callouses would heal, my mom would call me darlin' again (which I LOVE), I'd regain my internet privileges. Things would get comfortable and cozy and safe...and then I'd smart off again or break curfew or some such you-know-better-why-can't-you-quit-while-you're-ahead nonsense.

But it's kind of retroactive that way. I don't realize I'm ahead sometimes until I'm pulling up weeds in my parents' backyard. Besides, I'm not a head. There's a girl attached to the head.

She's imperfect and will do you wrong. But she'll also do you right. She will laugh when you trip and fall, but will also help you back up and ask if you're okay, once the giggles subside. She will stop pointing at the wet spot on your butt after you accidentally sit in a stranger's bodily fluid on the subway once you threaten to let her get lost in Brooklyn.

I promise, I promise!

I'm glad you're my friend, despite, nonetheless, and because.