By finding my best friend, I finally found my love for Charlotte

She didn’t like me when we first met.

Oh, she’ll tell you she did; that I’m being absurd. She’ll shake her head, roll her eyes and mumble something like, “For f**k’s sake, here we go with this nonsense again.”

My best friend, Abby, suffers my “bits” wearily and she only lets me get by with a modicum of bullshit before calling me on it. And, those are just two of the many reasons that I love her.

We met about a decade ago when we both worked at a commercial real estate company in Uptown. She was hired a few months after me. When I learned that we were both from West Virginia and that we had both graduated from West Virginia University, I figured that we would be fast friends.

We weren’t.

It was when we both signed up for the office volleyball team that we started to mesh. We would grab drinks at Angry Ale’s after practice. In the office, we started chatting via intra-office messaging and walking to Harris Teeter for the daily sub specials.

We found out that we had read the same books, loved the same movies and hated those car decals where Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes” is peeing on something. Then something strange happened: I started telling Abby about my past, parts that I had only shared with a few people.

[Related: Friend bait: The easiest way to make friends as an adult in Charlotte.]

When I moved to Charlotte in 2001, I had planned to leave my past, with its secrets and shame, hidden deep in the winding mountain hollows of West Virginia. I planned to build a new life, shiny and uncomplicated. Who wanted a friend whose parents were drug addicts who had both done prison stints?

The new people in my life didn’t need to know about the free school lunches or that I slept on the couch at my great-grandmother’s when the screaming and fighting at home got too much to bear.

For the first five years that I lived here, I did just that. I I enjoyed living here, but only on the surface. There was a disconnect between my new city and me. I blamed Charlotte, said she was bland and preppy.

It wasn’t Charlotte’s fault. The person I was pretending to be, a buttoned-up bank executive who tried to disguise her Appalachian accent, was an imposter.

Abby changed that. She never flinched, not even when I told her the parts that I was certain would make me unworthy of her friendship.

By revealing who I really was, Abby knew to take me to a sad movie at the Manor after my mom died so that I could sit in the cool, dark theater and cry in peace.

While I cursed a blue streak, she had the presence of mind to copy down the license plate of the car that hit mine after the My Morning Jacket concert at the NC Music Factory.

When a particularly bad case of drinker’s guilt consumed me and all I wanted to do was curl up under my covers, she insisted that we keep our plans to see “Avenue Q” at the Blumenthal where I laughed until I forgot about my foolishness from the weekend before.

I was reminded of my hope as we chanted “Yes, we can!” and clapped wildly for a young Barack Obama during a 2007 campaign rally in Uptown.

I fell in love with Charlotte as I fell in love with Abby.

Abby got married and moved to Pennsylvania in 2013. The distance hasn’t always been easy, but thanks to airplanes and smart phones, our relationship is as strong as ever. Yet, I still miss the everyday nearness of her. I’m sure I always will.

Fortunately, I have reminders of her all around. I feel her with me when I visit our favorite spots: The Manor, RuSan’s, McMullen Creek Greenway and Sanctuary.

I have built my life in Charlotte. I live here with the love of my life. It is where my daughter was born. It is my home. It is the place where I accepted my past and started telling my story.

Charlotte is also where I met my person, Abby, the person who has seen all of my broken parts and stayed anyway. As I make my way through the place where I now know that I belong, I carry her with me.

Photos: Courtesy of Sosha Lewis

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "By finding my best friend, I finally found my love for Charlotte."