Anne Thomas Fit: "you're my best friend, and i love you"

I want to tell CAITLIN JOHNSON how much I miss her! She is seriously my ride or die. She has been there through everything and will continue to be there through everything. She is the only person (besides Patrick) who knows everything about me and vice versa. It's amazing to have a friendship like ours. For the past eight years we have been told by several people that they have never seen a friendship like ours. Caitlin has dealt with some serious bullshit with me and has been there for me every single time Patrick deployed.
They say that living with your best friend will either make or break your friendship, and from the beginning, it MADE ours. I'm not sure where Caitlin and I would be if we hadn't lived together for two years. Not to mention, we worked together at Mellow Mushroom and spend every moment together outside of work or school together. We just understood each other, we were the friends that could give a look and completely understand what the other was thinking. Our senior year of high school we sat next to each other in Photo Journalism with a teacher who did not like us at all, but the feeling was mutual. The entirety of the class we would look for apartments in Jacksonville, completely disregarding whatever she would talk about. At that point we were getting ready to go to college and live on our own so we were pretty excited. We were also part of the Spanish Honor Society, I was Vice President and she was President.
We lived with a girl named Shelley in our freshmen year of college who we were skeptical about at first but sort of liked her. Overall though, no matter how much we liked anybody else, it was always us before them. We lived in a one bedroom nasty cinder-block dorm room that probably had parasites, with one bathroom mind you. Every time I went pee I took lysol wipes with me, okay, I might be exaggerating. All of us had different class schedules so I was the only one up for the 7:00AM statistics class blow drying my hair. Both of us had early classes though, and Shelley had the classes that started at like 4:00PM so whenever she came in super late with her boyfriend, we would make sure to make lots of noise and crinkle the cereal box really loud in the morning. One time we found (WRAPPED) condoms on our Mini-Wheats box and were permanently scarred, never ate Mini-Wheats in that dorm room again. You would only understand why we were scarred if you had lived there. During our time in X-106 or whatever our room number was, we got locked in a convenient store during a tornado warning, we woke up to a robbery attempt (yes, robbery attempt). We were pretty sure the dudes had a gun from the sound of the knock on the door. Pretty scary stuff! Hmm, we would always hit the gym really hard and stop at the store on the way home to buy Oreos and Twix. We smoked in the dorm room and had a party between the two of us when Shelley moved out. We both suffered a break-up, mine and then hers. Not to mention all the other crap... Flooding, etc.
Summer came and of course we were together pretty much 24/7. My parents were in Germany so we had the huge house and the outdoor kitchen to ourselves, all of which entailed swimming, smoking, cooking and partying. We spend every Wednesday surfing at St. Augustine beach and eating lunch at Oasis. Every night was spent working at Mellow making that cash flow, it was perfect. Surfing, work, friendship. School started back up again in late August and at that point we had two other roommates that we went to high school with. Luckily, the apartment was two bedroom so they shared a loft and we shared a room. At that point, Caitlin stopped working at Mellow and starting predominately preforming, I was still working at Mellow. We lived together for that year and were pretty frustrated with the living situation with the other girls. If I remember correctly, someone started tying to grill on our porch but the grill caught on fire, and then everyone in the apartment was penalized for it regardless if they had anything to do with it. Also that semester, a good friend of ours joined the Navy and we basically lost touch with him. NATE, if you happen to ever read this, we miss you. A few months later we both moved out, she moved into an apartment with a couple girls and I moved into a condo closer to where I worked which was at the NEW Mellow Mushroom at Jax Beach. It was pretty foreign not living with my best friend who knew my mannerisms and who knew my schedule. My new roommate wasn't used to having me come home at one or two in the morning after getting off of work. Her roommates were interesting, Vegan and drug addict that would basically shoot up in the bathroom. It was a pretty crazy time in our lives. I'm pretty sure at that point I declared my major as communications and wanted to be a news anchor and to be honest with you she never changed her major..... I changed mine five times. We would get together at my place once a week or so for dinner and every Tuesday we had date night which was usually a movie. One time we saw the Madea movie twice. Nobody will ever understand our love for Madea, nobody, not even our men!
During that time is when I met my love. Also during that time she was breaking up with Toby and contemplating getting back with him, so basically she was still with Toby? I'm not sure, I don't really count their breakup. I love them. I will never forget the day that they met! I see it so clearly. I actually used to work with Toby at the YMCA and at a mutual friend's going-away-party for the Navy, is where they met. It was a toga party and Caitlin was sitting on Toby's lap and I'm fairly certain they were singing Across the Universe. Love at first sight! Also that night, my toga had fallen off in the parking lot and Caitlin had to drive my car home. Toby had long hair that I hated, I'm not sure how Caitlin felt about it, although she's mentioned a few times that she likes "hair-cut Toby," I too, like hair cut Toby.

Circa 2005?

The night Caitlin and Toby met!

This is pre haircut Toby.

Zoolander and Voguing

Patrick and I did the long-distance back and forth thing for a while and as soon as he finished his first deployment I decided I couldn't live without him so we thought it was best that I moved out to the panhandle. It was pretty heartbreaking knowing that I would be five hours away from my bestie. The funny thing is, it feels like moving out of the apartment kind of prepared us to live without each other. I talk to Caitlin every single day. I have known friendships before, but I have never known a best friendship like I have with Caitlin. They say friendship isn't about being inseparable, it's about being separated and nothing changes, and that's exactly how it is with me and Caitlin. We're pretty much down to a science... We see each other and we (generally) commence with vodka or sangria. This is the shortest possible version of me and Caitlin, and the shortest it will ever be because I am certain our friendship will be forever! I love you Mary Caitlin and thank you for being there for me through everything. <3 I'm about to go a little picture crazy!