The first time I spoke to Jennifer Collins she thought I was dating my brother.  He and I had gone to our local Blockbuster to rent a few movies and she was working the counter.

"Does it bother you that your boyfriend wears that shirt in public?" She asked.

He was wearing his 'Sex Instructor: First Lesson Free' t-shirt.

"No," I replied.  "Because he's my brother, not my boyfriend."

It was the beginning of a budding friendship... and a whole lotta incest jokes.

I ended up getting a job at that video store and Jen was my boss.  After working with her a couple of times I think she deemed me at least cool enough to talk to at work.  But then she did something that seemed the complete opposite.  She asked me if I liked to watch Friends, then scheduled me the very next Thursday night.  I was a bit befuddled until I realized that she wanted me to work with her so we could shirk off our duties and watch the show together.

We ordered a large pepperoni pizza from the Hut and tried to clear the customers out as quickly as possible so as to not be disturbed. It was the moment the pizza arrived that I knew we were going to get along spectacularly. The food was so greasy it had leaked through the box and onto the counter, pools of it settled on the on crispy pork product and glistened over mounds of mozzarella. It was a thing of beauty and we dove right into it as America's favorite clique rattled off witty repartee.

 We ate the entire pie with unabashed enthusiasm then followed it up with two cigarettes and closing duties. Working with Jen was always really fun. I'd even stay after I clocked out just to talk to her while she worked on whatever her tasks were for the night.

Then as the years started their magical dance across time, we settled into the most effortless friendship I've ever encountered.  We both ended up at other jobs, had relationships, saw them come to an end, suffered losses, suffered economic hardships, and joked our way through it all because, let's face it, laughter is just more fun than tears.

Jen is my constant companion into a fantasy world of our own creation. Our speech is riddled with inside jokes that refer to things only we understand.  Things that only we would remember anyway. We do things together that simply wouldn't be possible with anyone else.  One of the happiest moments of my life was spending two hours storyboarding a scene from one of my numerous projects.  Basically we talked to a lamp.  And it was perfect.

Jen is just the kind of person who is incredibly caring and giving. Her laughter is one of the greatest sounds I've ever heard.  She is loyal, sweet, understanding, funny, beautiful, charismatic, intelligent, observant... I could go on, but a page full of nothing but adjectives would get boring at some point.

Whenever I need a big decision made, I ask her.  Because I know that she always has my best interests at heart and her Libra brain always works out the most optimal choice.  There isn't a person on this planet that knows me better than she does, and that's not always the greatest incentive to keeping someone around.  But she's stuck it out for nearly ten years.

She has seen me through some of the worst moments of my life and I hope that I've given even a little bit of that back to her.

I've always believed that our friendship was strong enough to withstand whatever we may have to face in the future and I'd pray to a God I don't even believe in to be right about that one.

I am literally lost without this girl.  I could have everything I ever wanted out of life, but she holds such a huge piece of my heart that, without her, existence would be nothing more than a state of sustainability.

It's not easy being my friend.  I can be a self centered jerk a whole lot of the time.  But hopefully, despite all that, she knows how much she means to me.  Because I want many more years of lamps, billboards, Ben, Tilda, BSG texts, Home Depot men, being adventures, self shots, punch bugs, Bat Chick, Squirrel Girl, lottery tickets and skyways.

This is Whiskey actual, telling Vodka that she loves her more than life.  And no matter where the future takes us, that part is never gonna change on this end.