“So. Pretty nervous. I figured I’d start this way because it would be blatantly obvious even to those without the most astute intuition. Honestly if you were just passing by the stadium door and caught a glimpse my entire being would scream neurotic. Which is basically just a fancy word for anxiou-. I’m sorry I don’t mean to insult your intelligence or ramble but I managed to do both in one fell swoop. I don’t honestly know why I was chosen as the Salutatorian, I can’t remember one time where I did something remotely significant that would garner this honor, but reluctantly here I am. I have been racking my brain ever since I was chosen to give this speech and as I look out at all the families and loved ones, but especially my fellow classmates everything that I had planned seemed irrelevant. I wanted to talk about how great it is that we all made it and worked so hard. That we are all so lucky to have our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and so on, but I’m quickly realizing how ignorant that comes across. We don’t all have two parents or even any parent as much as it pains me to say, and for lack of a better word highschool sucked. It was awful, full of different smells, and personalities and each day was jam packed with drama and monotonous on and off again relationships featuring the same people. It’s exhausting, when we first walked into those doors four years ago we had no idea about the pain we would endure, the crippling insecurity, the fear of doing something one day that would ultimately shape how you would be viewed for the rest of your scholastic career. One slip up and you are forever etched in stone as whatever it was that was ill received by your peers. We all choose our own paths, but as much as I believe that to be true we also all choose each other’s paths. I think that I was chosen because I wasn’t significant, that maybe being irrelevant is what caused me to be significant, which is an oxymoron but it makes sense. We all endured the same experience in one way or another, but not everybody who started this journey with us is sitting in front of me today. We have a decent sized class so it’s possible that today or at our rehearsal you laid eyes on people you could have sworn to never have seen in your life. It’s also very possible that the person sitting to the right or left of you was the very person you were cubby neighbors with in 3rd grade if only due to last names. Probably had lockers within the same vicinity as you as well. I don’t want to make rash assumptions but they most likely aren’t the people that come to mind when you think about all the triumphs and failures that you were exposed to in your four years. But that can’t be true can it? If you had a conservatory of butterflies in your stomach the first time your crush asked you to any of the plethora of school dances that we had, or had your heart ripped out of your chest when your intense but fleeting crush told you they didn’t feel the same way. It most likely happened in the hallways possibly near your locker, or at your locker, which were alphabetical, in the same manner we are sitting in now. The classmates to your left and right have an abnormally high probability of having been there when all your dreams came true or when you saw them slip away. I used to watch this show, well I still revisit from time to time if I’m being honest but there was a quote that always stuck with me. Of course I’m going to paraphrase but it talked about how we take pictures of significant moments in our lives, when we were happiest but if you look in the background there could be a complete stranger, someone of no significance to you, but was in painstakingly close proximity when you felt the need to capture a moment, and now they’re forever apart of it too. Without even knowing. I think that is my point in all of this, we started together and everybody here finished together and that bonds us. High School was like a maze with 300 different paths to the exit but when it’s all said and done we all escape to hopefully bigger and better things. In five or ten years there will be a reunion and the bulk of us will return to this town and dress up, all of us showing our faces for different reasons whether its to show off our success in adulthood or maybe to see that one person that always made us wonder if they were the reason why nothing ever worked with anybody else. Whatever the reason we all show up. It might not seem like a big deal but if there was a party tomorrow night and all of us graduates were invited I would bet even less of us would show up as opposed to a reunion, because what we don’t realize is this was the time in our lives that shaped us, whether it was miserable or the best time of your life, the friends we made and the people we met all share something in common that if you move away you will only be able to touch from the outside. The comfortability of knowing this is where you came from will never falter, no matter how much we try or believe it’s dissipated, it’s there. In all of us. So to all of you, some who are legitimately seeing my face or hearing me speak for the first time, or were by my side through it all. I thank you sincerely, because whether you know it or not you gave me something that I’ll never forget. A place where I belong and where we all belong if we ever feel the urge for it. So with all that being said, I congratulate you, The class of 2021”

When I was 13 years old my father lost his brother, and with that seemingly his mind. It was so strange to me because I had a brother and even though I wasn’t at height of my emotional maturity I could imagine what it would feel like to lose a brother. Or so I thought, In this disillusioned state where I found myself questioning why father was falling apart from the loss of his brother It also bred a lot of anger. At who I wasn’t entirely sure, my dad over compensated heavily when it came to the quality of relationships my siblings and I had, I think that naturally if you live on top of people for some time you will butt heads. Now that is multiplied exponentially when you make those people your siblings. My little brother is six years younger than me, and we shared a room, there was never really a point in our life’s where our ideals would have overlapped. I remember being in middle school with this 5-7 year old who can’t decide whether he wants the door open or closed or the light on or off. I couldn’t stand him, but I remember the day that it started to always change, I can’t exactly put my finger on what he had done but I was pissed and I found myself standing over him. I didn’t think that I was as towering as his body language had indicated, but it wasn’t even that, it was his face, and how he apologized to me. He was terrified of me and that honestly breaks my heart to even think about it now years later. It was difficult for me sure, being the oldest son being subjected to the brunt of whatever my father was feeling in the aftermath of his tragedy, but it wasn’t just me it was all 4 of us. Including my brother, who in retrospect had it the worst at that time, because he was getting it from two sources, I projected everything that I was subjected too directly on my brother. The day I saw him terrified of me in that way was the worst day of my life until that point. I didn’t immediately want to be his best friend because he still sucked. He was a young boy, but the love I felt for him, the responsibility to always protect was like nothing I had ever felt. It was and still is the purest relationship that I have in my life. I have a lot to thank my brother for. First I want to thank him for at least making it to 15 so he wasn’t completely unbearable. I want to also thank him because the level of trust that I feel we have is remarkable. There is no doubt in my mind that you always have my back no matter the consequences, and for better or worse and I appreciate that. I want to thank him because without him being who he was I would have never been able to understand what my father was going through, he gave me a reason to believe that if something ever happened to him I would stop breathing in that moment and cease to exist. If he didn’t show me that kind of love I would have never understood why the loss of it could turn someone’s whole life upside down. You are my life line, which blows my mind because I dislike you 70 percent of the time, but you never fail to make me laugh or tell a joke that completely turns my day around. You are the epitome of living your best life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Everybody has a different connotation of what they view family as. For some it is a “ blood is thicker than water” approach, others have their own reservations with their biological family and value the care and appreciation of friends and other people in their life, I would think it was because when someone has no obligatory reason to care about you and does, it touches something inside you that is so deep you don’t even know that its there. I don’t just mean immediate family but extended as well grandparents, aunts uncles, I grew around around my friends who would always talk about being at their grandmas house or having their whole family over for the holidays, but I didn’t. I was raised over 800 miles away from my extended family, it never really bothered me because a percentage of those friends that was larger than I would have liked to see didn’t have a two parent house hold or siblings that for better or for worse were on their team. I was thankful for that even if I didn’t realize it at the time, but the end of the year always got to me alittle. I realize now that It shouldn’t have, my family has a tradition, we spend our Christmas Eve with my bestfriends family, I think that friend really doesn’t do it justice. Both of his parents worked during the day and my mom didn’t so they would be us, so much so that I honestly believed that he was related to me, and I hated him to the point of asking my mom if he could just stay home and not come, but I was always happy that he did he’s my brother in every sense of the word, the only person besides my actual brother thats seen my most unfiltered moments in life and took them in stride. I don’t even remember when we started going over there just that we would, and it was the best day of the year honestly, to see my parents interact with people that they loved which is hard enough to do as it is let alone as an adult with a family but they did. To eat family dinners together and play games at the table, it was all so mundane in nature but it meant the world to me because I didn’t have a big family, well not one as easily accessible as most people but I didn’t care. They’re a family almost tailor made for mine. They have 3 children that mirror my siblings and myself my younger brother was the only one who didn’t have a set partner in crime to go through the night with so he would bounce around which was okay too because there’s symmetry in imperfection. The way that he was able to bond with all of us because he didn’t have a set “ playmate for lack of a better word. My little brother brought a lightness to everything being so much younger than everybody else we all felt like we had a stake in how he would turn out. There was an older sister same as mine, but everything that I wouldnt have gotten from my sister I got from her, she is inherently kind and eerily talented, I could never really pinpoint what she loved to do because there was passion and commitment in all of her endeavors, I admired that about her even if I would never say it to her face. I think it was because my sister possessed all of these qualities but she would let her self be all these things when she was with her. Their son was my age and I already talked about how close we are but its hard to put into words our unspoken synchronity, in that we spoke and acted the same way, but we’re different in so many aspects that people we knew didn’t even know we knew each other. He was the first person that taught me about being loyal to someone who wasn’t in your family because he was with me before I could even remember, the best person I know and he doesn’t care if anybody else is aware of how good he is because its not for them he is who he is and is unapologetic about it. They also have a younger daughter I didn’t interact with her very much because she was my sister too but there was something about the way she would command a room she always ended up getting the things she wanted which is a skill that is uncommon to come by, her and my sister are vastly different but I’m glad that they shared a childhood because there is never anybody that you can’t learn something from. The dad is, for lack of a better word interesting, he reminded me of my father in so many ways insanely talented the way his oldest daughter was always a new project or something new to tell me about when I’m in the threshold of his doorway preparing to leave, no matter how he acted he had a way of making you believe he truly had your best interest at heart, lied like a rug but I didn’t see it that way he was entertaining and he made you comfortable around him he opened my father up to have someone so likeminded. The mom is a beautiful soul the nicest person that ive ever met she treated me like I was one of her own, it wasnt how people will tell you to “ make yourself at home” and then you continued to not completely feel like you belonged, she made me feel loved in a different way then my mom did I think they brought out the best in each other because my mom loved her children like they were her own and bonding over loved ones is a bond unbroken. I love the whole family with my entire being becaue they gave me what I didn’t know I needed not just me though my whole family as well, they were an extended-nuclear family for us. I almost forgot actually, there was a new addition to our tradition and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her honestly because when you love someone you are suspicious of anybody who has the capacity to hurt them but my bestfriend, his girlfriend is more like me than she is him and I realized how she love him rivals how I do and how my extended nuclear family has taken to her like she was their own only reinforces the fact that she belongs and It was a pleasant surprise, because I love her too. Partly because of how my friend does but I think it’s mostly because of how she loves him she brings out all the things that he would shield from the world if it was anybody but her, I’m glad that she’s my family too. I have been away for two Christmas eves now and the tradition still stands because the bond a family has is stronger than any one person but I hope that this is a piece of me that they can have there. I will never be able to thank the six of them enough for giving myself and my family the kind of love that only family can. From Okinawa Japan, I wish Merry Christmas to my entire family.

It was a small town, if you even could call it that. He had lived their all his life, it was the kind of town you see in movies where everybody knew each other and they could detect a newcomer as if it was a super power, the shops shut down for football games, and the prom because every member of the town had shared such an illustrious history that all includes the culmination of their formative years, it was the last time they were all able to just be before the reality of life really set in. Having to decide whether to move on from this small town or to stay and continue the beautiful simplicity of a familiar home. It was full of inside jokes and a healthy hierarchy all predicated on who they were in their years as children, but the prom always meant so much to the town. Everybody was so emotionally invested in the lives of their town members because it so closely mirrored many of theirs, and ones that had come before them. Even though it was a small town they of course enjoyed the cinema, how they could be taken away from the monotony of their everyday routines, especially the boy. He loved to go and be so taken with a larger than life figure going through the trials and tribulations that ultimately make him the hero he was advertised as, or the epic love stories where all had seemed lost but, the one thing that was the most important never was. He particularly enjoyed the romance pictures because he himself was smitten with someone. Of course this was a small town so it wasn’t as if he would meet someone late in his adolescence and be so overtaken with emotion that his ambition would fortify so much so that he would take a chance. He couldn’t give up everything he’d ever known for a “new to town” girl that showed him pieces of himself that he didn’t even realize were there. So he settled, well I wouldn’t want to say settled because she was everything that he imagined when he talked about the perfect love story. The “girl next door” well not exactly next door but it was walking distance and he had an arguably active imagination so it was okay. She was beautiful, strikingly so, but it had a hint of subtlety because she was grossly unaware of how beautiful she was when laughed, or how you couldn’t find a word if you were smacked in the face with a dictionary when you really looked into her eyes. All of these things were great but It really believe it was the way that she looked when she talked about her passion the way it washed over you like a warm bath, and caused every hair on your entire body to stand up. She was magnificent, and way too big for this town. I think somewhere in the boys head he always knew that she would realize that there was nothing in this town that she really needed, to be what she was always going to be. Not much scared him, but this was petrifying, the thought that the star in every one of his fantasies would vanish and he’d be left with just that. Fantasies. They were both seniors in their small town and prom was closing in. The boy wanted more than anything to tell her how he felt, just like he had seen in the final minutes of all the romantic pictures he loved so much. You already know how the boy felt about her and all of her essence and you could guess how it went across when he poured his heart and soul, because the girl was so good, she would never have made him feel bad for his declaration but she had to tell him she had already decided to leave the town after prom she was one of the ones that needed more, needed to get out. She had never felt like she really belonged where she was, she loved it and she had made friends that she knew she could count on for life, but she felt like something was missing. I think somewhere deep down the boy always knew she felt this way, the way he knew her was uncanny and he had been right, and knowing all of this, he still said what he had too. There was a part of the boy who didnt believe that she couldn’t have felt the same way, but he loved her too much to risk being wrong. So just like that, he let her go and shortly after prom she was gone. Before the school year even ended. She dissipated from existence in the small town. For the first few days she was dearly missed, but like with everything time begins to swallow the memory of her subtle qualities that made her once in a life time. Everybody except the boy that is, he stayed in the town, well near it at least he decided that he loved every ounce of it but he didn’t realize until it was in the rear view mirror, so he came back to teach in the small town, to be the guidance young boys like him would need to follow whatever it is they want and to never grow complacent because they might miss the moment where it all changed, as sublte as it might be. He wouldn’t let that happen, because its everything that they are and will become. He was happy, he often thought about the girl, he knew where she was and what she had been doing, she was working in the films creating those moments for people to fall in love, choosing the songs that would play when the unlikely couple would kiss for the first time and would permanently stamp there mark in the viewers minds forever, he wasnt upset because she was doing what she thought she needed. Years had passed, proms had come and gone but he never forgot any of them especially his. He can’t Exactly recall how long she had been standing in front of him, or how long it took for every hair to stand up on its end when he heard her voice, after all this time she still could turn him into that 17 year old boy with his heart in his hand, down on one knee prepared to give her the world. He had gone to speak, just a greeting, it was all he could manage, but she put a finger to his lips. She had something to say. The boy wasnt all that much for surprises, I think mostly in part to the fact that everybody knew everybody his whole life its hard to be taken by surprise. The last thing he had every expected was to see the girl again, I mean why would he? She got out, was doing what she loved with nothing holding her back. He thought that the sight of her was the last thing he’d ever expect but what she said next left him speechless. She told the boy, that she has been traveling the world running her life and it was all she thought she’d ever wanted, to touch millions with her passion the way she had done so many times in their town, but she had run out. Not of ideas, never that, it was the easy part she told the boy. What she had run out of was the passion, the why, what had driven her to be what she needed to be and inspire those millions. It was the boy. It was him who drove her to touch all that she did and it was paradoxical in nature. She had never realized it because if he had done what he did earlier in his life split her internally, about what she wanted or thought she needed she wouldnt have been what she was because it was the good that she saw in him, to put her first that ultimately made her thrive. She was heart broken because she had taken so long to see it, had to run out of one of the many reasons she was amazing to see the truth. That he wasn’t apart of what was holding her back, he was the driving force to help her pursue everything that made her who she was she just didn’t realize it at the time. I have to be honest, I don’t know the boy or the girl or even what happened after she had came to him with this realization, but whenever I tell their story I always want one lesson to be taken away even if you never speak of them or their story again. Always take a really good look at who you are, what you love, but more importantly who makes you happy because it’s incredibly easy to associate them with the place that you feel you’ve out grown, just know that you always find your way back home, just hopefully its not too late.

I must’ve not slept the night before.  I think it was my way prolonging the inevitable, because I knew that if I had gone to sleep at a humane hour when I awoke, the day that I dreaded would come to fruition.  I was like a recurring character in her life but the connection between us was unbreakable, like the feature character you can’t hope but wait to come back again, but you end up waiting so long you can’t possibly believe they will live up to expectations, but right there before your eyes you’re swept right back into it.  She was my friend, my best friend maybe not to the naked eye but there was a reason for that.  She genuinely didn’t want strangers feeling like they knew her, didn’t want to add any substance to rumor-esk notions that almost everybody is undoubtedly subjected to.  If everybody can say they know your most intimate thoughts doesn’t it make them less significant to the people who heard it straight from the source?  Well even if you think the answer is just a little she didn’t want any part of it.  She was brave, and mysterious, calm but excitable in the best way, only when the situation truly warranted it.  A contagious laugh and irreparable ability to inspire you in any situation.  With all this she remained my friend. I never imagined her to be anything different, not even an inkling of romantic attraction until I realized that If I wasn’t the man in her life my heart would undoubtedly stop.  I truly believed that, it’s not a figure of speech I did what I loved for me, but it’s like the old cliche when I say “having all that you love doesn’t mean anything with no one to share it with”.  Well I found this to be true.  Painfully so, but here I was the night before staying awake not drinking not even watching tv but staring at the black tuxedo which was traditional to a T because she valued intimate gatherings but always had an appreciation for a time long before this one so I had It modified for a bow tie, not a clip on but one that you tied, accompanied with many hours of youtube tutorials that ultimately ended in me tying it one time perfectly and leaving it for the day of.  I don’t honestly remember when I fell asleep because if I had realized I was succumbing to a soloment state that forged the way to slumber I would have done jumping jacks all night to escape from its unavoidable grasps.  Normally I would jump at the opportunity to dress up because it’s not a necessity in my everyday life but I dreaded every moment of it on this day.  She was getting married and to be candid I wished the man she was to wed had been awful.  Maybe even a little scary just short tempered with no sense of humor, nothing dangerous but enough to make it easier to hate his entire being.  He wasn’t though.  He was great. I would have loved him to marry any of my sisters and to have him as a brother in law.  He was patient with kindness that was unmatched. He was good to her and for her, unlike me he was consistent, “safe” if you will.  But through all this I still carried a disdain for him that rivaled that of anybody you could imagine who had a valid reason to hate someone.  As reluctantly as possible I remember eventually making it to the lot where every car was parked because there was a shuttle taking us to the small vineyard where the ceremony was to be held.  I wanted to walk to avoid just the predicament that I had found myself in.  Sitting knee to knee with her mother and father on either side of me as if fate was playing a cruel joke on me.  I had to sit on the ride which felt as if it took hours when in reality was maybe 10 minutes and listen to her parents talk about how much they adored this man who was to take my person away from me, to add insult to injury they also proceeded to go on and on about how they always thought it was going to be her and me whose wedding they’d be on a shuttle too, but “fate” had different plans.  Which cut much deeper than they would ever had comprehended, and I strongly disagreed but I didn’t really have a leg to stand on.  I mean what was I going to do? Ruin her entire wedding? Months of planning? Friends and family from every where contorting their schedules and lives to make it for this once in a lifetime moment?  I couldn’t do it. I had missed my window.  Eventually I had made it from the brutal ride to my seat which was in the front row next to her mother, fitting considering I am the best friend but again proving that fate had a sense of humor putting me so 

close to my ultimate demise. But there I sat. In movies they always leave an opening for the person who can’t see the love of his or her life spending it with someone else. It’s always along the lines of “ if anybody has any reason why these two should not be wed speak now or forever hold their peace”. It should be amended to “forever Rest In Peace” because I was completely aware that it wasn’t said at “real life” weddings so I was for lack of a better phrase “SOL”. The ceremony commenced and I did everything in my power to not throw up from how I was feeling, especially when I saw her in her dress, it was like I had seen her for the first time with the beauty and emotion of 100 life times. I can’t really explain it any better. She had finally made it to the altar and her fiancé was in tears, which is understandable because seeing her on the happiest day of her life would have brought the Buckingham Palace guards to their knees. The priest had started to speak and I don’t know why, but I found myself standing up, well attempting to but I had felt a push in the small of my back when I had frozen mid way, undoubtedly that had come from her mother. I looked at her and she gave me this kind of nod that said everything and nothing all at the same time. “ I can’t let this happen” I began a little louder than I probably needed too, and I wanted to sit back down but I was in it now for better or for worse. “ I love you” I told her “ it’s always been you from the moment you sat down across from me in 7th grade nervous about making new friends, I could go on and on about how I feel about you’re what I envision for my future. I could also talk about how I know that he’s the safe choice and he makes you happy, but there’s a ceiling on your love with him and even though I scare you and annoy you and make you madder than anybody you’ve ever met, I challenge you and make you think I know that somewhere inside you feel it too.” I stopped to take a breath and also to access the situation because I needed to read her facial expression as I had done for so many years all I could make out was that her eyes were watering so I didn’t take that as a reason to stop. “ All I can really say is that it’s always been you, it’s four tiny words but they contain an entire lifetime of love and life and it’s the epitome of us, I-“ actually I think you get the gist of the declaration of love I think you get the gist of the declaration of love that took place that day. Looking at us you could probably imagine how it went, who got tackled and how much money was lost because of that stupid guy who broke the window after it had closed. I think after all these years she can laugh when we look back at it, so I do love telling the story especially when she’s sitting next to me, despite how it begins and how messy It was in the end, but I am forever grateful and you can ask her yourself how she feels but I think you have a good idea, about what she thinks of the guy who couldn’t hold his peace because she was being given away to the wrong man. It’s Like they say in all weddings real and in movies “ til death do us part” and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I had played sports my entire life, but when I decided I was done, I was really done. To the extent of not watching, not playing, and rarely talking about them at all. I wanted to figure out who I was apart from them because it was all I had known. I didn’t even really know why I did play. It just had become something that I had always done even though obviously there was a finite origin somewhere. If you had met me a year from the day I turned 18 there would be no reminisce of who I used to be, only who I was becoming with each passing day which could have differed depending on my mood. Which I think is probably normal when you’re defining who you are from who you were. I was still in the midst of that transition when my dad, with all our faults in our relationship, still believed that somewhere was the kid that he most likely remembered wanting to shoot on his hoop until it was so dark he couldn’t see in front of him. That even in the thick of winter was shoveling snow so that he had a path to dribble. The same kid who acted like it was game 7 of the NBA finals dribbling around anything and everything in his house so much that his mom constantly scolded him. But he never stopped. That wasn’t who I was at 19, it had gotten to the point where it seemed so distant that it was someone else’s life, and memories that I had acquired. My dad introduced me to two people that would help shape who I would be in the following years. You never know how important someone is going to be in your life when you meet them, and it’s beautiful when you get to a point it’s unfathomable to even begin to wonder where you’d be if they weren’t. My dad had met A 9 year old girl and her father, somewhere playing basketball my dad had obviously seen something in her that he knew needed to be fanned like a fire that his son had once had to be the best not for anybody else but for himself. He told the girls father that he didn’t train but that he had a son that might be a good fit, and to be honest I’m not sure how I felt about it, I still was under the impression that all of that was another life, but not my life anymore. I remember the first day that I met them. I had pulled up to a middle school and I saw my dad rebounding for a little girl and her dad standing off to the side. There was something about the way he talked to me when I first shook his hand. I had never really been in a situation where I met an adult who didn’t already have some kind of preconceived Idea about me having known me from adolescence but, he didn’t because he was meeting the “now” me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at the time. But he treated me like an adult, not as a child, and it was a foreign concept to me because I never really had someone meet me as an adult and decide on my character from there. As I contemplated the dynamic of our first meeting, I went to meet the little girl. She was brilliant, and she also had something so familiar about her. She asked so many questions and she actively listened which honestly is impressive for anybody at any age let alone a nine year old to a stranger, but she was special. I think at the time because of where I was at in my life I didn’t realize how much she reminded me of me. She had this pure love of the game that was unmatched, and it felt like the hours we trained went by in minutes because she was just happy to be there, but the most intense person I had ever met. I knew right away that I would be doing a disservice to her if I didn’t plan and bring everything I had to working with her. Being as young as she was at first the training would be a combination of me just talking to her about anything and everything and also working on basketball. She had become a friend, she saved me from forgetting a part of my life that made me everything that I was, just because she reminded me of me and seeing it on the outside, the passion, the competitiveness, its awe inspiring and she pulled me off of the path I was going down to renounce it all. I’ve always loved kids because of their innocence so I wasn’t entirely surprised that she had this affect on me but what I never could have seen coming is that her father, from our very first interaction had treated me as if we were equals, like we could be friends. He’s the first friend I ever made as an adult, I never felt that awkwardness of talking to someone’s parents and waiting for a good break in conversation to cut and run, it was natural. I didn’t realize then how important his friendship would become to me, he’s one of the greatest men i’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing with an unending kindness that cant help but make you want to push yourself to be better. To hold myself accountable because he trusted me to mentor his daughter. I think back now and it really shouldn’t have surprised me that she was as great as she was because she had a father who adored her and wanted her to have every tool at her disposal to feel and be great. I hold them both in such high regard til this day and I assume I always will because the girl pulled me from a dead line and showed me why I loved this part of who I was so much, and her father showed me a kind of friendship that I wouldn’t have ever been able to recognize let alone appreciate if I hadn’t of met him. I haven’t seen them In a while but there are many times in my everyday life where I think of them because I wouldn’t be who I was if I hadn’t showed up to that court on a Saturday morning, I can’t thank them enough for helping me become the person I’m going to be so with all my love this is for both of them as well as a thank you for being a friend when I didn’t know I needed it the most.

It was simple enough. It only took 20 minutes. One brisk fall day in the middle of seemingly nowhere 2 guys one old and one young both paid to do an odd job. I didn’t hear the entire conversation because I hadn’t been put together enough to be able to understand but once I had I did the only thing I could do. I listened and I think I had fallen in love with the varying cadence of their conversation. I couldn’t decide whether they were strangers or family because they were bouncing ideas off each other like they had been cut from the same cloth. I didn’t realize how much I needed what they had given me even if it was only in those 20 minutes I had learned so much about these strangers. Some time passed until I met the next pair of memorable people, and this time I had heard a man and a woman. I think that they were in some kind of distress. I was still fairly new to the world so I didn’t follow as well as I could have but I could feel what was going on. A love story was ending, I think that someone had broken the trust, and from what I understood trust is the most important thing in loving someone. It conquers insecurities, stops the budding seeds of obscure thought about not being good enough or doing enough for the one you love. No matter where you go, who you meet trust will let your love be what it should be. It was the first emotion I really had learned about and I was fascinated because it produced so much intensity so much pain from a four letter word. The girl was the first to walk away, and I couldn’t really see how she reacted to the end of the conversation, but I could feel the boy was shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t know what this was, a reaction to the end of an era. The feeling was eerily dejected and contagious in nature. I didn’t have much time to process because the man soon left and two more came. An older woman and a younger one. They had an extremely potent loving relationship but it wasn’t the same as the man and woman before. It was as if the love the woman shared for the younger boy was out of protection and there wasn’t the sense of insecurity that I had felt before it was more fear, never wanting that boy to be without her. She worshipped these moments where she could be everything for this boy which lead to me believe that maybe it was a fleeting moment or moments. I assumed that the boy would grow older because i had seen other older boys but what would come of the older woman? Would she stop or would she grow simultaneously, the boy must not ever be able to catch her in age because she’s afraid that he won’t need her anymore. Deathly afraid and the boy has the benefit of not even realizing that his mother’s biggest fear stems from him. His inevitable maturation into someone who doesn’t need to be protected day and night by this older woman who is more in love with him then somebody could be with anybody. They left shortly after I had this realization, and it started to look different outside very very cold. I saw less and less people and when i did it was only in passing only hearing bits and pieces which depressed me immensely, I couldn’t speak back to anybody but it was beautiful to be able to witness what people were when they believed they were alone its not beautiful in the sense that I am amused by their pain or their suffering but it’s beautiful because nobody is afraid to be in pain when they’re alone you get to see people own their demons and sometimes even lose that battle but that is the beauty of life the beauty is in our attempt even if we can only battle it alone. This realization made it that much harder to be alone and when I started to fall apart mostly due to the cold It only made it that much harder, but one day the snow started to clear up, or at least I believe it’s called snow I had heard someone mutter it in passing. I wasn’t in the condition to support anybody my legs could barely hold me up, and right when I had given up hope, A older man and a younger man had come to see me and they began to talk to each other and that was all I would have needed, but then they started to build me back up. I wanted once again to be the solace for people to feel whatever they needed to feel whenever they needed to feel it, to live in the fabric of their own reality even if it was only for a moment. I learned that I had even been given a name too. I had no idea what it meant but I wore it with pride. “Park Bench ” it had an interesting ring to it, I would be there for anybody who needed me because I needed them just as much.

Sitting here now, grey but she would never let a description like old be associated with her, she preferred seasoned. And I don’t think i ever understood the gravity of the word whenever she uttered it as her preferred synmomn to the latter, when says seasoned its because she’s been prepared her entire life all the trials and tribulations and admittedly the roller coaster of emotions that was our relationship that led us to this moment. To where I know what she’s going to say and her I, but we never jump the gun and assume because I think that part of the reason that we are inexplicably in love is because no matter how well I know her she can still suprise me. It’s always been that way from the first day we met and I saw her moving in across the street with her parents. She had this uncanny ability to show her vulnerability, her insecurities and own them is if they had no affect on her. I was never as strong as her even when my parents made me go across the street to welcome her family to our neighborhood I was taken aback by her beauty i had never been speechless in my life albeit I was only 12 when I met her she had me wrecked from the start. She was genuinely disinterested in anything i had to say that day and when our parents decided that we would car pool the silence would speak volumes. It was weird to see someone every single day and not know anything about them but to be so tragically in love. Middle school went pretty much like that and highschool was even more heartache. The self inflicted torture of seeing her with all her countless boyfriends that I had convinced myself were just distractions to deny the clear fact that it was always going to be her and me, even if she didn’t know anything about me other that I lived across the street from her and we go to the same school. because there was no way that anybody else would be able to appreciate the love that she could give them. They don’t understand the beauty in someone being able to admit that they need to be loved and more importantly they need someone who’s ready to be loved. If I hadn’t taken the back road home from school I never would have seen her taking pictures of what looked like just the trees. Something in my body told me that I needed to stop that I had to take control of my destiny before it got away from me. When i asked her why she were taking pictures of trees, that were so overlooked it was hard to imagine them as art inspiring and her answer was the first of many suprises. She told me that trees, well the plant life in general give us life and the ability to do everything we love and thats what life is about and she wanted to appreciate them the way that everybody appreciates life but not where it comes from. It was such a small thing but immediately I felt terrible, I had no idea who this girl was I was so terribly in love with the girl across the street and i was worse than any guy she’d had brief daliances with because I pretended to be better to want to love her for some existential reason when I couldn’t have because she was a stranger to me. I decided that I had to know her, and the more I did the more I realized that I had missed her my whole life, I missed not knowing when she sad, what makes her happy, what lights her fire, why she was who was going to change the world. And that was my mission every day from then on the girl next door had become my friend and the love that I had was too potent and so powerful it could have powered small nations. The first time she kissed me it was an explosion of my senses, I had honestly become accustomed the idea that I would be her friend and only her friend I was oblivious to her growing affection but she told me that she loved me. That I was the first guy who’d really seen her for everything that she was and that didn’t love her for anything that she wasnt and it meant the world to her. It was simple, there was no “Say Anything” boom box moment there wasn’t even some prom night culmination where our eyes meet and there nothing left to do but be together. It had marinated and grew so naturally into love. But to me all the events that led to that sensory overload that was our first kiss were the story. It would be what we told our children before bed, our friends who had never imagined that we would be the ones who would be end game, its also the story that we told our parents who I honestly think always expected something to happen between us, I don’t know if they foresaw this grand of a love story but they saw something special before we did. So as we sit here seasoned and grey I have undying grattitude for the love of my life because she showed me what it was like to fall in love, really and truly fall in love. When I see her I still see the 12 year old girl who was a perfect blend of confidence and vulnerability, I still see the highschool girl who would go and spend time in the woods appreciating the gifts that we are all given and all over look. I see the perfectly seasoned love of my life whom of which I am forever grateful to have starred in the chapters of her life that would be mundane to the naked eye but to me its the greatest love story ever told.

I’m not sure who I’m really writing this too. Well I guess thats not entirely true, I know who its to, but writing a letter that the recipient will never read kind of seems ambiguous in nature. But if you could read it there things I’d give anything for you to know.

Right now, You are scared, but it is what makes you brave, because being brave isnt not feeling fear, its being terrified in this moment and still living your life. You don’t know how to be loved, which is why when you love it overwhelms your senses, and when someone loves you, its at their own risk. I want you to know that You have the most beautiful mind but it is your greatest adversary, its one of the only things in your life that truly scares you. You hate when people use the phrase overthink because it is synonymous with the way you survive in your life. To always be 2 moves ahead subconsciously and another 3 wittingly. You stay up at night even though it sacrifices your sleep because it is the only time in your own home you feel as if you could be alone with your thoughts. The only time to be exactly who you are. You don’t cry when you should, but its because you feel that numerous aspects of your life warrant that degree of sadness. Sometimes it was it night during your time with yourself but if it came it would be months before tears came again. You cannot stand your brother, even though he is the one person you feel responsible for in your life because he’s an extension of you. You also feel bad that you cant stand him because he is also the purest thing that you have in this life. It’s okay because you’re doing the best you can. You only feel out matched by your younger sister who is your life line, even if you don’t know it yet. Be patient, She will save you. Your parents may give you the impression that you are the manifestation of all the things that they gave up, all their dreams and aspirations and you’re pissed that your childhood was not about you, but everything that you had disrupted in their life. You’re young so you can be, and you deserve to own your pain, but you don’t deserve to keep it with you, but thats okay too. When you decide to let the weight slide off, you will have a bestfriend in your father that you never would have seen coming, that one definitely seems like the most far fetched. But trust me, even though I know you aren’t completely able too trust anybody yet. You will make terrible decisions, because you still believe that calling it a mistake renders you exempt from the consequences, but I do admire that you in the face of all of them believed there was something more, something to be learned from every experience. Take your time because you will learn to not feel alone in this world and its the most beautiful feeling in the world to feel understood. You of all people deserve too even though everything in your brain will speak to the contrary. I love all the things that you are because you made me everything that I am. You would hate me if you could actually meet me, but I find a certain solace in knowing that. Because you have disdain for anybody who can be themselves in this world without seemingly trying when its all that you want in your life. Again, its okay because I know you get there. I would never want to be you again but I remember you fondly because you taught me lessons more important than anything I could have learned in a book or from a teacher. That I never minded failing, I hated it but I wasn’t afraid to and that is important to Me. You also taught me that there is genuine good in the world and because of you I can be that. And finally from you I learned to never regret anything in life, because if you love who you are in this very moment, then you cant wish away any pain or sadness because its everything thats built your love. You became the change that you wanted to see in the world so, here’s to you kid.

Sincerely, 

You.

I think that it’s safe for me to say that we undervalue and under appreciate our friends. Especially the significance of new friends and what kind of perspective they can give to your life. Most people would instantly disagree or resent the idea that they aren’t the perfect friend and to an extent that reaction could be validated, but then I would ask them to take a moment and think if there’s anybody in their lives right now that they feel doesn’t give them back everything that you give them. And if the answer is yes, then would it be so audacious to say that you might be that person who floods into someone’s mind if they were asked that same question? Making new friends isn’t nearly as scary for a lot of people because they don’t think that they really want to connect with someone on anything more than a superficial level. I mean it starts from an extremely early age and I remember facebook statuses, of all things is what Made me realize the gravity of the situation. All the “ lets hang out sometime” or he “ hit me ups” were as hollow as, or if not more than the people who would post them just to see the one or two people who they actually wanted to like or comment. Which again is the problem, to inherently want the affection or attention of someone who doesn’t equally reciprocate, but we still want it. I’m guilty of it as well, and I think the reason is that it’s not so much speaking to our character when we do these sort of things but to the sense of security we feel in that those who already love and adore us will continue to do so, so we hunt for what’s next. What potential candle can be lit, or in most instances flicker and waste away because in the end it really isn’t what we wanted. Most of the time we don’t really know why we do the things that we do, well I take that back. We don’t always have, or use the courage or the emotional intelligence it takes to really dive past the surface to know why we would want the attention of someone who might empathize with someone they talked to in a grocery store checkout line more than they do with us. I just want to challenge everybody to make a new friend, preferably someone who has the ability to actually hurt your feelings, to make you text first, so you realize that wanting to talk to someone all the time, wanting them to be who you laugh with is, the epitome of friendship, because somewhere in our heads we know that the people we are manifesting all of our attention towards isn’t doing anything out of spite, we are doing so out of fear because the worst thing that could happen is that we want someone in our lives and the only reason that they leave or the friendship dissipates is because of simply you, and them. Just challenge yourself, because an old friend or a new friend, but especially a good friend Could open up an entire world, and who wouldn’t want that?