Growing up, my next door neighbor was my best friend and an only child too.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.
I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.
A lot of people that I've had around me have been my closest friends since junior high, back when we were exchanging each other's clothes, staying at each other's houses. That was before I had anything.
Growing up, I had a very happy childhood, with two parents who are still very much together.
Somewhere in my callow, misspent youth, I was smart enough to marry my best friend.
I was friends with all different people and all different groups. And that led me to being friends with a few people who didn't even go to my school. Now I have the most amazing collection of friends of all ethnic backgrounds and upbringing and financial backgrounds.
When I was 5 years old, my best friends were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen because we lived across the street from each other.
My siblings and I were friends with the boys who would become our stepbrothers - we grew up on the same street. I feel very special to have these amazing people in my life and if we hadn't all moved into this big house together I think I would have missed out on that, because we would have drifted apart.
My childhood was very gregarious, and I was usually surrounded by close family.
My mother was my best friend and confidante.