Science- Erin and I met in school, and we had a huge fight. She forgave me, and we became inseparable.
- Describing her as my best friend is not enough.
There were four people standing at the altar at my wedding: me, my husband Kareem, our officiant, and our combined maid of honor and best man, Erin.
Erin held my train, danced beside us for hours, and helped clean up that night. The next day, the three of us drove home to our shared apartment.
Some people found it odd when my fiancé and I moved in with my best friend. My boss raised his eyebrows. My family grilled me about how the situation made Kareem feel. A friend suggested Kareem and I were taking a step backward in our relationship.
A newlywed couple is seen as an independent unit that should move out of their parent's homes and stop living with roommates. The need to be around people other than your spouse is supposed to wither after high school and college as work and family become your priority. But my family isn't complete without Erin. If Kareem didn't understand this, I wouldn't have married him.
Calling her my best friend doesn't seem to capture our relationship
I'm never sure exactly how to characterize or explain my relationship with her. "Best friend" feels insufficient. We compare ourselves to sisters but fight less. On days apart, we spend hours talking on the phone. There has never been anything remotely romantic between us, but I can't imagine life without her. A mutual friend once described us as "platonic life partners."
I met Erin and her twin, Sarah, in elementary school. Our relationship began after I fought Erin on the playground and left her in tears. They were new in town. I thought Erin was going to steal my preexisting best friend. Erin forgave me without hesitation when I attempted to befriend her at our school's Halloween party. We became inseparable soon after.
We grew up spending most weekends at each other's houses. The twins drove me around before I had a driver's license and patiently paid for my coffee and french fries when I showed up to lunch without cash. They were regulars at my family's holiday dinners and even spent one Thanksgiving with my mother while I was out of town. I received Snapchat photos of Erin doing the dishes with the caption "your mom's favorite."
Sarah and I were emotional tornadoes who oscillated wildly between ecstasy and anger together. Erin was our ever-patient, ever-calm fulcrum point. She is the only person I can spend limitless time with without ever feeling frustrated or annoyed. She's the sort of person who always sees the best in everyone and who is always down for an adventure but never gets upset when things go haywire.
I told my then-boyfriend that I was glad they got along
I met Kareem in my freshman year of college. Erin and Sarah picked us up at the airport when he flew home with me that summer. The car windows were down with music blasting when they pulled up to the curb. The twins waved wildly from the front seats. Soon, they were telling Kareem about my embarrassing childhood memories and poking fun at me with him. I told Kareem it was good that they were getting along because he could expect Sarah and Erin around constantly forever.
That rosy future was shattered when Sarah died three years ago. In the aftermath, I clung even tighter to Erin. I felt that she was the only one who could come close to understanding the pain I was in, even as I knew I could never fully grasp the magnitude of her loss.
It seemed only natural that Kareem and I would move in with her.
The smallest moments of living together have been the more joyous — Kareem snuggling Erin's fluffy dog, the succulents Kareem bought me thriving next to Erin's cacti on the windowsill, vegetable curry split evenly between three bowls. When Erin attends dinner with Kareem's coworkers, she usually makes more friends than Kareem or me. At one such event, Kareem announced, "Here comes my wife and roommate." Everyone laughed when I entered, not realizing that there were two people until Erin followed me in.
Erin sent me a photo of two elderly women she knows who are neighbors and best friends. "Us in 60 years," she captioned it. We dream of never being more than one door away from each other. We do not want a future of annual visits or even one of weekly coffees and lunches as life flies by around us. We want to see each other every day.
Erin knew Kareem was going to propose to me months before I did. He wanted to buy a traditional-looking ring, but she insisted he purchase a band with a cluster of tiny jewels in keeping with my taste. She snapped photos as he got on one knee in a secluded, sunny clearing during a hike. Once I said yes, Kareem asked Erin to hand him the ring they had picked out. "I forgot it in the car!" she said, slapping her hand to her head. I fell down laughing, but it turned out to be a bit. He had the ring in his pocket all along.
Erin suggested she be the one to give me away at the wedding, but Kareem didn't think the symbolism worked. "It's not like Erin plans to give you up at all once we get married," he pointed out.