I miss Dana ... I haven't seen her in a while ... since we got back from Kuwait actually, which was about 6 weeks ago.

Wondering who Dana is? She's my best friend ... almost my only friend. I hang out with people from college, we talk about everything and anything, still; I never consider any of them as true friends ... it's just Dana.

We grew up together in Kuwait, she's 18 months younger than I am, but ever since she was born we became practically attached to the hip. My father and her's were room-mates before they both got married, and they remained good friends afterwards. Throughout our childhood, from before we could even remember, we were inseparable, we'd go everywhere together, one of us was at the other's house all the time and we used to have sleep-overs when we were kids.

As we got a little older we began going to the same schools. Our school was an elementary-junior high fusion, and I always felt somehow responsible for here, like a big sister should be. I still remember her first day in 1st grade ... she was crying and following me everywhere ... it took me a lot to calm her down a bit, and I was only in 3rd grade! I never had any siblings so I acted as her big sister and I carried on this role with her younger brother and sister, who I absolutely love as if they were my own siblings ... we used to fight like siblings do, too.

It all started to go downhill when we were separated in high school, she went to public school, I went to the best private school in the country. Our weekly encounters dwindled down to just once a week ... then once every other week, we still talked on the phone, but we didn't have much to talk about, our lives were a little different now.

Years went by, and the moment finally came when I had to leave Kuwait for good to come here for college. I was ecstatic; my whole future is ahead of me, I did anticipate the anguish of leaving my parents behind, but it never occurred to me how painful it would be to leave her. She's not much of an internet person, so we only exchanged greetings through timed long-distance phone calls and then we'd tell each other everything else during vacations when she came here ... which were drastically short ... comparatively.

That only lasted 2 years thankfully, she then came for college. I was thrilled, we're going back to the good old days ... but alas ... she was stuck with a branch of electric engineering for a major in college. A stupid, difficult major with too many chauvinistic male students, cocky professors and impossible courses ... not to mention "antique" equipment! Her campus is too far, her schedule is messed up and to top it all off her grandma - whom she was living with - died last year.

Now, we talk to each other once a week, we see each other twice a semester, and even if we have a million things to talk about we either don't have the time to say them, or they're too specific for the other to understand ... we lead VERY different lives now!

I wish we could go back in time, to a moment in junior high when we were sitting in my room, hiding from the annoying bunch of women who were visiting and laughing our hearts out at that nasty word her goofy friend said at school ...

I just miss her you know ...