What do you call children who grow together, from one stage of life to a completely different one?

"Two little girls, growing out of their training bras
This little girl breaks furniture - this little girl breaks laws
Two girls together, a little less alone...

...You were always half crazy, now look at you baby
You make about as much sense as a nursery rhyme...

...So now you bring me your bruises so I can oh and ah at the display
Maybe I'm supposed to make one of my famous jokes that makes everything
Maybe I'm supposed to be the handsome prince who rides up and unties your hands
Or maybe I'm supposed to be the furrow-browed who thinks she understands"
- Ani DiFranco, "Two Little Girls"

We met in November of 2000, if memory serves me. Her birthday is the thirtieth of July, mine is the thirtieth of May, of the same year. We were eleven years old.

We both have brown eyes, though hers are wider and larger and prettier than mine. We both come from a mixed Italian/Irish descent. We both have a love for all things equine, and that's what drew us to one another originally. We're both eighteen years old now.

She writes now, a near daily blog for a nationally-renowned magazine. It's wonderful to have such an insight into her life when we don't always have time to talk to one another. And as I was reading her latest entry, I was struck by something - almost a mirror image but from so long ago.

She wrote, "If you're wondering where that came from, well: I'm actually blogging from my laptop outside, sitting on my mom's rocking chair on our porch in the beautiful 70 degree weather."

A sentence without poetic merit, a simple statement of fact. But in my mind's eye I saw a much younger girl, a girl she had described to me... twelve or thirteen years old, wrapped in a blue blanket that smelled of vomit, scared and shaking on the front porch. A mind far too sensitive, a child entirely too observant of the world around her... yes, this is how we became disturbed. This is how we became different from our peers. We were disordered in every sense of the word, and likely still are. I can tell you every single calorie that I have ingested today, but if I did that, I wouldn't be able to hide the shame. I don't want to end up with my fingers down my throat tonight. The scars crossing over my arms have faded, have healed over again and again - but I'd go through razor after razor again if I thought I could hide the marks.

I wish I could say that we've grown into mature, healthy, happy young adults. I can't say that. I can't even come close to saying that.

I love my life and I know she loves hers. But sometimes... sometimes the days echo one another so loudly and sometimes I can't help myself from returning to that time when everything was so different. So much freedom and will lost with age, that I can only hope we'll be able to get back.

So when I laugh and say that one day, they'll think of us as Sylvia and Anne, you know, I'm telling the truth. When you tell me that I can't kill myself because I haven't written my masterpiece, I know you're only looking out for my best interests.