An open letter to my best friends

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10 years, anniversary, Best friends, Core Four, friends, Friendship, frienniversary, open letter

Iconic Sex and The City protagonist Carrie Bradshaw once said, “It’s hard to find people who will love you no matter what. I was lucky enough to find three.” She might be just a fictional character, but I am a real person and I know that I am lucky to have found my own three soul mates.

It has been ten years today since us four girls – lovingly named The Core Four – found each other and filled a space in each other’s lives and hearts that we didn’t know needed to be filled.

I can say with all seriousness that we have been through everything together. We survived elementary school, high school and university and we always stayed by each other’s sides no matter what. We have faced bad days, good days, terrible boyfriends and bosses, friends outside our comfortable group and days when sometimes we wished that we could be each other’s biological families.

We have helped each other overcome loss, breakups, pushing each other to believe in love again, cheering each other on with job promotions and final exams and being there for each other when things were “normal”, not just when things were bad or good.

I can say with all my heart that the friendship/sisterhood that I have with these three ladies are the most meaningful and profound relationships I’ve had. There are so many people who aren’t as lucky to have find their best friends as children and be able to keep that relationship strong into adulthood. I can honestly say that my life wouldn’t be as enriched as it is without my best friends.

So here is to ten years of friendship – I love you all very dearly.

#CoreFourApproved

“Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro

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am writing, Andrew Garfield, Author, Authors, Books, Carey Mulligan, dystopian novel, Friendship, Heartbreak, heartbreak studies, Inspiration, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kiera Knightley, Literature, Love, Never Let Me Go, novel, Novelist, photo gallery, Photography, Quotes, reading, Science fiction, star-crossed lovers

If you read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and didn’t cry, you don’t have a soul.

I have read this book four times. And each time, I sob. I’m not talking a few tears. I’m talking about big walloping sobs where your body shakes and your chest hurts from the crying. Yeah, this book is that kind of intense.

Published in 2005, this dystopian science fiction about three friends who grow up together in England in the late 20th Century. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy attend an exclusive boarding school called Hailsham that has an unusual emphasis on encouraging physical fitness and artistic expression. It is gradually revealed to the reader that the students of Hailsham are actually clones being raised to donate their organs. After completing their schooling, the three friends are sent to live in communal housing with other clones before entering the final stage of their lives when they will become “carers” for other clones who are beginning the process of donating their organs, and then finally begin to donate their own organs until they “complete.”

While this novel has been recognized as being a love story, I believe that there is so much more to it than just that, which is probably what makes this book so heartbreaking. I think that the emphasis on relationships – whether romantic or platonic – correlates with the notion that these relationships are bound by the unfair holds of time. I think realizing how fragile time really is in relationships is enough to make us hold on to the people we love just a little tighter.

I have seen the movie starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Kiera Knightley, which came out in 2010.

While I really don’t think that books should be adapted into film, I will say that the movie did stay loyal to most of the book. And it certainly still had that cry factor that made this book so memorable in my mind.

And if that score isn’t enough to break your heart, nothing will be.

Even though this book has completely ripped my heart to pieces, I’m am kindly forcing you all to read it. I want to break your hearts, just like this book had done mine. Sorry.

We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.