Miracle Bubbles

It was a hot, humid night laying in a hammock in South Carolina.  I had just graduated high school and had been thrust into an emotionally-charged romance with a boy who I had viewed only as a best friend until a few weeks prior to graduation.  As we lay next to each other listening to the crickets, batting away the gnats, and smelling like dried lake water we began to talk about our friendship, our relationship, and our future.  Neither of us had ever felt the pangs of heart-brokenness caused by losing "your first love," but we both knew that when August came and we both left to attend separate colleges that our comfortable relationship would drastically change.  We began to discuss how we were individually going to adjust to our separation and he pressed me for my opinion on our seemingly-doomed relationship.  I looked up at the black sky and replied "You are like my Miracle Bubble." He turned his head to look at me and laughed, confused at my fantastical and unusual answer.  It was at this time that I explained that I had certain people in my life that affectionately called Miracle Bubbles.  

During my childhood I changed elementary schools twice, middle schools twice, and high schools twice.  As a result, I often had short, broken, and poorly-ended friendships with many people that I have never seen again.  I learned to cope with the uncertainty and dismay I felt for not having any lasting connections by cherishing little moments with people.  Occasionally I would develop a strong friendship with a truly wonderful person and over the course of  our friendship my brain would memorize the lines of their face, the sound of their laugh, and the expression of sadness, laughter, and curiosity in their eyes.  Their comments, questions, and jokes would permeate my thoughts daily as if I was subconsciously trying to meditate on the wonderfulness and beauty existing in the spirit and mind of that person so that I could somehow be made purer.  It was this special group of people that really compelled me to laugh and live from day to day.  They cut through my numbness and kindled the fire inside of me; they performed a miracle.  However, our situations would change after a given amount of time and I would be physically separated from each and every one of them; they would float away.  The combination of the inexplicable vivid life I led with each person and my inevitable separation from those I cared about the most placed those truly wonderful people in a whole new realm of existence.  They became Miracle Bubbles.  

As I explained this to my best-friend on the hammock with tears in my eyes, he looked at me in silence.  I did not need for him to say anything or attempt to console me because I was crying water-droplets of joy and awe, not sorrow.  He was next to my side on that hammock and had been my friend through thick-and-thin.  When I left for college, I risked never seeing him in person again, but I had accepted that.  He had encouraged me to live and is a truly wonderful person and because of that I finished my explanation to him that night with "You are one of my Miracle Bubbles."