How to Find Your Perfect Best Friend

Remember that movie Practical Magic? Where Sandra Bullock makes that spell for the perfect man, and she looks at the stars and lets the wind take the flower petals into the night? Well, this is kinda like that-- except there’s no magic. Here is my recipe for how to find the perfect best girlfriend.

She is loyal.

Like Lassie loyal, like no matter what secrets you tell her about your last hook-up and consequential temporary STD, mum’s the word. You don’t even have to say, “The following run on sentences must be kept secret;” she just knows.

She agrees with you always.

I’m not saying she lets your drinking problem turn into a disease “agrees,” but sometimes a girl just wants to talk about her first world problems and have her girlfriend go, “Yeah, that really does suck.” You want someone besides your inner voice to say, “God, you don’t deserve that shit storm that just happened to your beautiful soul! Let’s invite more ice cream and get this pity party really rolling.”

She gives up things for you.

Say her boyfriend takes her on a beautiful dinner cruise and she gets an S.O.S. text from you. That bitch isn’t even staying for the chocolate fountain. She just calmly asserts, “I’m needed elsewhere,” chugs her champagne, and jumps into Lake Michigan without a life vest.

She can read your mind.

You zone out in the middle of your salad at lunch, and she knows exactly what you’re really worried about. Your left eye twitches, and she knows it’s work-related. By the time you open your mouth to say what it is, she’s already written a fake doctor’s note so you can get out of whatever awful temp job you had the next day and instead go see the penguins at the Shedd Aquarium together (it costs extra, but it’s worth it).

She falls down with you.

You have a drinking problem; she’ll take another shot, too. You “smoke socially;” she’ll buy a pack of Camel Crush and stand outside in the middle of winter with you. Can’t sleep most nights? Good, because she can’t either, and she’s rocking passwords to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and HBO GO. You question your body image? She thinks about her upper arms and agrees to workout maybe sometime next week? Nahh... you’ll both be “busy.”

She is super-supportive of all your ventures.

You want to open your own meatloaf Pop-Tart bakery? Sounds good! How hard could it be with a Venture One card and some false confidence? Anything is possible. Support each other. Choose joy not jealousy even if it’s hard sometimes; I promise you will only make each other better.

She has your back.

A month or so back, I had some haters on the internet say some mean things about me. My girls were outraged, going so far as to hire a hacker to see where the comment came from. Now all of that is extreme (and didn’t end up happening), but the idea of having best girlfriends who would be ready for a full-fledged girl fight in some dark alley in East Lakeview made me smile. And then laugh. And then play out the scene in my head...  remembering that a few of them could probably really hurt someone.

She loves you like family.

You know how twins say that they can feel each other’s pain even miles and miles apart from each other? It’s the same for true girlfriends. Every ounce of happiness and every moment of sadness can be felt by the other person like it was actually happening to them.  She would do anything for you, no questions asked. Period. Boyfriends, plants, favorite sitcoms: they come and go, but true lady friendship is forever.

She makes you better.

You don’t want “moms” as friends in the sense that they judge your moral character and substance abuse every day, but you still need a reality check every once in a while. God, even in regular things like, “Hey remember when you used to paint, and it made you happy? Do that more.” Or, “That was a great game, but you can do better.” The perfect best friend knows your true potential before even you do.

Casey Whitaker is a Chicago-based actor and writer, originally from Beavercreek, Ohio. You can see her perform stand up, improv and sketch all around the city as well as touring this great nation with the Second City Touring Company. 

She would like to thank all of the beautiful women in her life that she gets to call friends, including Rachel LaForce, Erin Diamond, Ashley Spencer, Danielle Kubasky, Kate Kershaw, Caroline Dunleavy, Meghan Babbe, Holly Wysel, Maria Randazzo, Shantira Jackson, Kris Lantzy, Anne Libera, Mary Scruggs, Jordan Whitaker, Sabrina Harper, Jen Ellison,Yvonne Whitaker, Karen Laflin, Ariel Dumas, Kiley Peters, and her lovely roommate Cassie Niespodziewanski.