This is what is on my heart today, Best Friends!

Truly a relationship that is hard to come by these days. I always say, "people aren't made of the same thing our grandparents were made of", at least that's how it feels to me.
I hear so many people say, "I don't have any friends, much less best friends". That's kind of sad. Best friends was something that exsisted when I was a tween and a teen. Pretty much after marriage that relationship died a slow death. I don't really know why either.
But really what inspired me to write this article is, I was sitting here thinking of my "bf's", =) And you know what, 99% of my true friends are the one's that I met online, never seen face to face.
Now, you don't even have to tell me, I know you want to stop reading right now because you think I'm certifiable! LOL.
But just open your mind to it for a minute.
I guess it started with Yahoo Clubs, which morphed into Yahoo Groups. Way over 10 years ago.
I had just started using the computer not too many years prior. Once I got online, and once I got over my fear of being cyber stalked and whatever people were fearing at the time. I found these groups.
There were women's groups, dating groups, couponing groups, talking trash groups, literally groups for every purpose under the sun. After group hopping for a few years, I started to get to know certain people. Well you know what I mean, as much as one possibly could know a person from talking online.
In the womens groups, we would talk about every subject we could think of. Then we started talking about our lives, even our deepest darkest secrets. I have shared things with these women that I didn't talk about with the people I actually saw on a daily basis. We even argued, got mad at each other, quit the group. Start up our own group. Make up, become friends again. Shed tears. On day I was thinking, I cannot believe that I am crying over something some chick said online. I don't even know if she is really who she says she is. I even dabbled in online dating, (just throwing that in, because I cried over some men who I didn't even know if they were who they said they are).
Anyway back to the subject, let's jump forward 9 years or so.
Today my best friends are those same women. We still haven't seen each other face to face. We encourage, we share, we give and recieve gifts from each other. We talk about our children.
For Christmas my best gift was made by my online friend, (we will call her 'TTO'), she made a calendar with the whole group of us, all of our birthdays, and our family's birthdays on the calendar. Special notes and quotes that are revelant to our experience as friend over all of these years. I tell you, when I opened that gift, I cried...they are my friends, my best friends. I would've never believed such a thing was possible.
In fact I have a couple other friends that I met online that have been closer to me than my blood relatives.
I cherish these friendships, I and I look forward to many years to come with these friends.
My wish is that one day, we could all meet on a talk show like the Tyra Show or Dr. Phil, lol. That would be great.
During those years one of our online friends was killed in a car accident, It was very hard because she was our friend, we knew her, but we will never meet her.
But I thank God for these friends, and I am blessed to be one that can say that I have true friends.
This is dedicated to my best friends, (I hope they don't mind if I use their first names)
Tammi, Kay, Staci, Lynne, Alisa, Dawn, Dorothy, Tona, Jamaal, Nik, & Tracy
I love you guys!
~valsank~