There’s something oddly comforting about walking into the gym at 6:30 a.m. (or p.m., depending on how chaotic your life is) and seeing the same faces every single day. It’s like we’re all in some unspoken sitcom together—different lives, same plot: trying to get our lives together through exercise and endorphins.

Gratitude doesn’t always come easy—it’s something you trip over while surviving. But this year, between the chaos and the comfort food, I can actually feel it. The love, the laughter, the second chances. All of it.

It’s funny how it takes being completely wrecked by the flu to remember that I actually live inside a body. Not just some machine that keeps up with deadlines, coffee, and chaos—but a real, breathing, breakable thing. This week, it reminded me loud and clear who’s in charge. Spoiler: not me.

There’s a strange weight to having a male best friend. People see us together and immediately want to assign a label, a story, a script. “Are you dating?” “Do you like him?” “Is there something going on behind the scenes?” And the truth is, none of that matters to us. But the questions linger, because society doesn’t really know what to do with a friendship like ours.