I met Carina in 2014 in college and let me say Carina was and still is one of the funniest and amazing people in my life. Carina always knew how to make me laugh, literally until I peed. Carina and I were also in a band, and no I’m not saying the name because 1, please don’t look for the videos and 2, I’m still not sure why we named our band that in college but we did have a pretty fire band photo that I still kinda love to this day. Other than parading around being the annoying 1st years and singing random songs or making up our own, Carina and I got really close over the 4 years we were in school together. Carina and I had pretty similar mindsets and I guess pretty similar traumas/mental health issues. Although we could both be pretty blunt and make a joke of anything, Carina is the sweetest and most understanding person I know. She could make fun of any person that walks including her closest friends but if anyone else tried someone she loved she was the first to speak up. I have many videos of fun times with Carina, just random stuff from singing Hamilton at midnight instead of going to parties to running around campus with her beloved bucket/safari hat that she literally didn’t take off for I swear like 6 months.

Carina and I both moved to LA after graduation and eventually moved into an apartment together in Glendale. And at the time I will say that both of us were going through a lot. And because we were children on our own in the world with our first big girl jobs and big girl problems, we definitely did not handle living together well. After about 6 months I decided to move out and we didn’t speak to each other for I would say about a year. After some time, and a lot of growth and reflection, we started sending each other tik toks and I think, if I remember correctly, the first few were funny and then they started to become more serious talking about growth and maturing and becoming new people until eventually one of us texted the other a long text about how we are sorry and have grown and understand each other and hope we can be friends again. I think we both needed that time apart and in that moment we both needed to come together. I still think about this time and how grateful I am that we both had that time apart and were able to grow, especially me. I’d like to think that I am such a different person than I was when we lived in Glendale. That I’ve learned a lot about myself and learned a lot about how to deal with friendships and literally grow up.

Since then, Carina and I have both moved out of LA, I think we both realized that the dreams we had of living in LA and “thriving” wasn’t really the dream life we thought it was going to be, and that is 100% okay! Also since then Carina has gotten married and I hope she doesn’t hate me for saying this but I vividly remember a night her and I were sitting on the floor of my bathroom, don’t ask what we were doing, but she told me she didn’t think she would ever get married and that she wanted to travel for the rest of her life and be free, that I would probably get married first and have kids sooner… Now listen, life throws you curve balls and lessons especially when you think you have it all figured out. But Carina was right about most of what she said except she got married first and to one of the best people anyone could have ever found for her, ever. And she travels and sees so much of the world. Life is so beautiful in that way. I am so happy for her and I’ve probably said it way to many times that she’s tired of hearing it and I am so proud of the person she is continuing to become. She inspires me everyday and gives the best advice without judgement and I couldn’t ask for a better friend in my life. Anyone that knows Carina knows how blessed they are to have her in their life and that’s definitely evident in this conversation.