This is just a little something I wrote today during class for a "self-defining moment."

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My most self-defining memory begins, I guess, as a 17-year-old punkass of a teenager. I was rebellious in all the worst ways—unhappy about my childhood and confined by the place I lived and the friends I had who didn't seem to want me anymore. So, I started experimenting sexually. Admittedly, that alone might have been enough to be considered a self-defining memory, but, no, it wasn't enough for me. I had to go and get pregnant on top of it. And me only having had sex half-a-dozen times with a whiny, immature guy who (thanks to my mother's pretty spot-on intuition) who turned out to be a real loser.

So here I am, a 17-year-old punkass of a teenager, and pregnant to boot. That year was punctuated with a lot of heartache, and a lot of bittersweet memories, and a lot of regrets and a lot of support from the unlikeliest of people. The first time my friend Joey called to see how I was, after literally months of not seeing any of my normal friends. The time my friends Cydney and Amy left me a welcome-home basket at my door from when I got home from the hospital. Even when Audrey backed me up as other friends came crashing down around me.

I honestly have to say that it was the defining moments of those friendships that taught me what it really means to be a friend. It doesn't mean liking the same movies or dating two boys who are best friends; it means standing up for them in the face of the impending universe in all of its terror, and staring down that fear because sometimes your friend is unable to. They taught me how o be an adult friend, instead of a child friend.