Fingertips

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

~William Shakespeare

I have been blessed with amazing friends.

It blows my mind sometimes.

Even in the busy crush of life, the dramatic push of overwhelming emotion, and the shatterglass of confusion that makes up every day of human existence, I have people in my life who take the time to remind me that I'm more than just another nameless face in the crowd.

There come those moments where the ocean waves threaten to push me right off the edge of the cliff...that one pivotal disappointment that makes my once-sure footing suddenly feel like I'm balancing on thin air.

...and it's then, when I'm unable to stop myself from toppling headlong into emptiness...

...it's then that I feel your hand catch mine.

Sometimes, it's your whole hand -- a long conversation until 2:15 in the morning even when you know that you have to get up to work the next morning at 5am...taking my hand and dragging me onto the dance floor for no better reason than I'm sitting on the sidelines...discussing Jane Austen over Pad Thai and hot coffee on a late night, cross-country phone call...spending hours strolling around an amusement park, catching up on three years of moments...

Other times, it's just your fingertips that grip mine and pull me up -- the brush of your lips against my cheek when I'm crying...the feeling of your ankle draping over mine during a moment when I'm confused...a simple text message or wall post that says "I love you" or "Wish you were here"...that simple, wordless hug when both our worlds are shattering from the inside out...

At those times, I realize that it's your fingertip moments are the ones that stick with me the longest.

The ones that mean the most.

The ones that changed my life.

There is [a] friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul. ~Edith Wharton