Forever in my heart

Throughout your life you meet a lot of people. People who become your friends, the ones who become your enemies or the ones you just simply deal with on a daily basis.
And then there are the ones who come into your life and change it forever.
This person whom I will write about in the following lines is one of them. She really is my person, my special person who changed my life forever.
So, Wowo, in case you are reading this, know this is dedicated to you.

Let me start from the very beginning. I will always remember the morning I got the first email. The morning I got a host family. I will always remember the feeling of excitement as I read through these lines, an absolute stranger had written to me. A stranger who was willing to take me in her house for an entire year.
I do not know what it was but I felt like I already had a bond with her even though we had never met.
And I just knew in my heart that we would become close.
When I first met my host mom I was really nervous. What do I say? Do I just walk up to her? Do I just shake her hand?  But when we finally met each other I knew everything would fall into place. I instantly knew I would have a blast with her, that I would be able to call her house my home.
It was almost like meeting a close friend you have not seen in a long time. All my nervous feelings went away when she ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug. Even though I was more than 7000 miles away from my actual home it felt like I just came home.
During our time together we have grown closer and closer.
I will always remember our road trips and dancing sessions in the car, the nights I was upset and crying like a little baby in her arms.
I will remember the talks we had. We talked about everything: Stupid stuff, gossip, things we love and things we hate. We talked about how weird some things are, about boys, about our dreams and hopes, about our fears and about our goals.
I will always remember the things we shared with each other. Things that you would not just tell anybody because you want to, things that hardly anybody out there would understand.
I will always remember  the long nights we had watching movies or cooking. We watched happy movies, funny ones, the ones that do not make sense and the ones that just get you all in your feelings. We made corn and hamburger meat with mashed potatoes, beans and Mac n' Cheese, pizza or homemade tacos ( the ones you smash on a plate), spaghetti with garlic bread or just brownies and cookies.
I will remember the mother-daughter moments: The moment I got called out of class on my birthday because she sent me a little surprise to the school-office, her watching me cheer at the basketball games,  the moment she  surprised me with chocolate on Valentine's Day, celebrating Christmas or the smile on her face when I put on my prom dress for the first time.

I will remember the moment she got a tattoo of my handwriting on her arm. I was probably one of the happiest and proudest girls on the entire planet.

I will simply remember the bond that we built, the closeness we shared and her way of making me a better person all around.
And then it was time for me to go back. To go back to my acutal home, my German home, leaving her and Oklahoma behind.
I know this sounds cheesy but she is the reason why it was so hard for me to go back. She is the reason I try to put a smile on every day even when I do not feel like it. She is the reason I keep pushing forward until I reach my goals because I want to make her proud.
From the first day I met her I knew she would be there for me, going with me through the storms and the sunny days, holding me when I cry and making me laugh.
It is almost like she took me in, took all the broken peaces inside of me and put them back together to something even stronger, something that is almost unbreakable and even if it broke she would have the special glue to put it back together.
I used to run away all the time. To run away from my feelings, from what scared me, from my past or even from my future. But when it was time to go back to Germany I could not run away. I could not hide, close my eyes and pull up the covers like I used to. I could not escape, I had to go back. And that was what scared me so bad, the fact that there was nothing I could do about it but face it. After all, going to America had also been a way of escaping things in Germany.
But then she came into my life and showed me I can not hide all the time. She showed me that it is not good to keep your feelings bottled up, running away from them. She gave me new strength, new motivation and confidence.
I always wonder how we started with basically meaningless names on a paper and how we ended up, impacting each other and not being able to imagine our lives without each other. We built this connection, from being strangers to becoming family.
During my exchange year I collected memories. I wrote every single song down we sang, kept every single text message, screenshotted Facebook-posts and wrote down all our adventures in my diary. I figured it would make it easier in the end to leave her and live in Germany again because I would have something to take with me. But after all it just made it so much harder because I realized how special this is and how crazy at the same time. As a 21-year old she really did care for me like a mother should, even though she is barely five years older.  It is crazy how much she means to me when about two years ago I did not even know she existed. She knows me better than the people who have been there for my whole life, she knows how to cheer me up or make me smile when others can not.

Now we are living more than 7000 miles away from each other, our lives could not be more different.
Everything seems to have changed, everything but our bond. Our hearts are connected even though we are thousands of miles apart.
She is still there for me through the ups and downs, through the good and bad, just as I would do the same thing for her.
With a tattoo of my handwritng on her arm saying '' forever in my heart '' she has made a promise to me that she will never forget me or walk away or leave my side. I can not even put in words how honored I am and how thankful to have her in my life.

I miss and love her very much and I can not wait for the day we finally get to see each other again.

Thank you, Wowo, for being my big sister, mommy, best friend and all at once.
Forever in my heart.