Love, Marriage, and Four a.m. Phone Calls (But Not All at Once)

I was at a beautiful wedding last night - of one of my best friends in the whole wide world. I've waited until now to blog about it for a couple of reasons, one of which is that I still haven't quite figured out how I feel.

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

I love my friend deeply and she has been with me through so much that I cannot recount to you in all the space on my blog and all the words in the universe how much she has done for me.

"Let me be the one you call
If you jump I'll break your fall
Lift you up and fly away with you into the night
If you need to fall apart
I can mend a broken heart
If you need to crash then crash and burn
You're not alone"

She was always there when I needed to crash and burn, and I have called her up at 4 a.m. And I tried as hard as I could to be there for her as much as she was there for me. We've shared so many late night phone conversations and so many tears and laughs and smiles. And she knows me so well that it's sometimes scary.

"It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter."

But it's partially because I love her so much that I feel so funny now. Because now she has someone else to be there for her, someone else to talk to at four a.m., someone else to crash and burn to. And while I may sound selfish to even be saying these things, it's true. It's hard to let go of even a little bit of someone who you're so close to.

But as we sat on the floor of her bedroom the night before she was going to get married, laughing at each other and making ourselves pretty (don't ask, trust me, you don't want to know) in what made for a weird sort of bonding experience, I realized that she's going to be there for me always. Marriage is not going to change the person she is or the friendship we have. And I am happy because she is happy.

"There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."

And her wedding was absolutely beautiful. She was a gorgeous bride and she is happy. And really that's all that should matter.

"Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry."

So, I hope for her that she is always happy. That she builds a bayit ne'eman b'yisrael. That their love does grow and become stronger with time. That she remains the incredible person she is today. That she knows that even now when she has someone else that I'll always be there for her.