I have always loved the idea of finding a soulmate. Someone in life who knows you better than anyone else in the world who you can call at any time and talk to for days on end without ever getting bored. Someone who you just knew, the minute you meet them, they will be by your side until the end. I always thought that your soulmate had to be a romantic partner, and while in many cases it is, it doesn’t have to be. Your soulmate can be your best friend, your sister, your mom, your dad, your dog, anyone in the world that you connect with better than anyone. For me, mine has always been my best friend in the entire world, Faline Sikes.
Faline (pronounced Fuh-Leen) and I met back when I had moved to Oregon in sixth grade. She was a year older, and both of our families went to the same church in town. My family and I had been going to this church for a few weeks now, but since we were still new to the area, we hadn’t really met anybody yet or made any friends. Faline’s mom, Melita, is the definition of a social butterfly, and one day after the service had ended, she invited my family to spend the afternoon at the church playground with a few other families for a little picnic.
My sisters and I were really nervous because there were a lot of little kids running around and we didn’t know anyone, but our parents had told us to just go and make friends. That was when Faline came running up to me, bouncing up and down with joy and a huge smile on her face, and with her hands full of bark chips asked me, “Do you want to make a salad with me?”
Faline is the oldest of six kids, and she was in the middle of entertaining her young siblings with a make-believe play kitchen, and while I was a little taken aback because of how insecure and nervous I was, I of course said yes. Little did I know this was going to be the person in my life who I would consider to be my sister.
We didn’t immediately click after that, since we were still young and didn’t really have phones yet and she lived 30 minutes outside of town, so we would only see each other, maybe once a week at church. A few months later though, our family invited Faline’s over for an after-church brunch, and when she came up to my room, she saw my book collection and we soon discovered we had the same taste in books, movies, TV shows, and music. We probably talked for hours, and afterward I got her mom’s number, and we would text regularly from my tiny little flip phone that my parents gave me and her mom’s phone.
Next thing we knew we would be sleeping over at each other’s houses, texting and calling all the time, waving from across the church when we’d see each other at mass, and talking for hours after church about the latest book we’d been reading together. Our sleepovers together were the stuff of stories and legends. Faline’s family lives in the middle of nowhere, on a beautiful hill, in a giant house full of light and laughter. We would run through the forests full of life, staring up at the stars at night, build forts and woodsy houses, and have booming loud dance parties outside on their giant porch until late into the night. When it was time for us to sleep, we would stay up until the wee hours of the dawn talking about everything in life from who we wanted to be when we grew up, to our dreams, and the people we liked. There truly was nothing like it, and we thought it would never end.
Then the year 2020 came around, and while it was a rough year for everyone, it was especially a devastating year for Faline. In March, right after quarantine lockdown was mandated, she lost a very close friend of hers to suicide and she began a long journey of mental health. Neither of us knew where to even begin in processing that, I mean we were 14 and 15 years old we weren’t supposed to understand such grief, but we stayed by each other’s sides and worked through it the best we could, and by the grace of God it made us closer than ever.
Then in October of that same year, Faline grew incredibly sick with something that doctors could not seem to figure out. She was in immense amounts of pain and was bedridden for months on end, and doctors from all over the area prescribed her a plethora of pain-relieving drugs. Nothing seemed to do the trick no matter what was tried. Eventually, the doctors assumed she had a severe case of Lymes Disease, but after a year of treatment with no sign of improvement, everyone was back at square one. Finally, after about a year and a half of treatments, medicine, and doctors of every kind, Faline was diagnosed with an incredibly severe case of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS). Our hangouts became significantly less frequent and for shorter amounts of time with sleepovers out of the question, and yet our friendship grew twice fold.
It’s now been about 4 years since that fateful year, and we still talk just about every day and call whenever we can, and at this point, Faline is someone who I consider to be another sister. I always beam with excitement as I take that 30-minute drive out to her house, and it never matters how long we wait to see each other, our conversation immediately picks up right where it left off before. We are two people who just always seem to understand each other no matter what, and whether we’re in silence or speaking, just having each other’s company is more than enough.
While Faline’s illness has prevented her from doing many and most things in life, it has not broken her spirit, nor has it stopped her from succeeding in life. She is an incredibly talented artist with a gift for music and digital art. We’ve always said the two of us are like two sides of the same coin. I am an outspoken dreamer who loves to talk, she is a soft-spoken dreamer who loves to show rather than tell. I write stories to tell how I feel, and she draws and creates art to express how she feels. She loves to create beautiful music, while I love to analyze and think about how the music makes me feel.
While 7 years of friendship doesn’t seem like much to a lot of people, to us it’s a lifetime. Growing up, I moved a bunch, so friendships had always come and gone, and I never really kept “childhood best friends” like a lot of people did. But for us, after everything we’ve gone through together, mental health battles, breakups, life, grief, sickness, health, family issues, drama, friendship breakups, and everything else in between, she’s my childhood best friend. We’re the two friends that will grow old in nursing homes together still talking about who we think is cute, bringing our kids to church together, traveling the world, being bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, and everything else life has to offer us. She’s the Diana Berry to my Anne Shirley Cuthbert, and the Beth to my Jo. The definition of a soulmate.