What I wouldn't give.

I don't know if anyone understands the true significance of this picture, but it seriously breaks my heart and makes everything right in the world all at the same time. 17 may be my favorite number, but numbers 12 and 57 will always, always, be special.

Those two boys right there have been my world since I was five-ish. First crush, first love, first date, first bf, first heartbreak. All summed up in those two boys.

Tonight was just another one of those wake-up calls that I really am growing up, and everything is changing. When I watched these boys play against each other for the first time three years ago, I would have laughed if you told me how things would be now. But change happens, and life throws you curveballs. Roll with it.

I do want to explain this picture a little more though. Those boys right there are the two people who have changed me more than any other human beings on this planet. They've saved me from myself more times than I can count, and I'd like to say I've been there for them as well. Dylan taught me from the time I was super little that I belonged cheering at a hockey rink, and not on the sidelines of a football field. Some people despise the potency of the rec center ice rink, but for some of us, it's almost too familiar. I can't name many of the NHL players, or even the teams, but I can tell you just about everything about these two boys, their teams, and their respective stats. I may not have been the best attendee, but I've never missed hearing about a game. I can't stand watching them get hit, and I scream louder than their families when they score. I yell at the refs when they get called for something stupid. I've waited for them in the lobby of the rec center for more time than I care to count, and no matter what they do, I will never get used to the smell of hockey pads.

This year, these boys are both captains of their respective teams. And tonight, I watched them play in their final games for those teams. Both were selected to play on the All-Star team, and there was not a crisis in this world that could have kept me from being there. Watching them play alongside each other, even if it was for different teams, made me more proud than I ever have been. And seeing them circle up for the last face-off literally made me cry. They faced off for the last time, and a chapter of our lives closed. In different ways of course, but a piece of us ended right there.

I shouldn't be so sentimental about a hockey game, but there's more meaning in that picture than I could ever begin to describe. So I'll leave it at this: I don't know if I can say I've been changed for the better. But, because I knew them? I know I have been changed for good.