I truly believe that the greatest gift that you can give to another person is to genuinely let them know that who they are and what they do matters. It has been my goal in 2014 to become a more thoughtful person. A string of deaths to some individuals who positively affected my life led me to conceive this series. As the words to my favorite song go, “And for those who have stood by my side, you are the story I tell.” You are the words and pages to my story.
Over the course of the next several months, I will be writing open letters to those who have positively impacted my story. I’m not going to lie. It is my goal to make you cry, not out of grief or pain but out of the realization that you do truly matter. I am not doing this in order of how important you are to me. For the most part (other than birthdays or other important events), the letters will be done in a random order. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you come away from this with the realization that you are extremely important to me.
Dear Merrill,
You and I have been friends for a long time, to the point that when our friendship began our hairstyles of choice were a rattail and a mullet, respectively. Because of that, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about some things.
We became friends during preschool. In fact, one of my first memories of you happened at my 5th birthday party at my house. You didn’t like where you were supposed to be sitting and you asked to be switched to my seat. To this day, I’m not sure whether it was my mom or one of my grandmas who made the executive decision to move forward with the switch, but it happened. You’ve never been afraid to ask for what you want, despite the situation. That’s a quality I wish I had more of.
Even at a young age, you had two qualities that made people want to be around you: a distinct, infectious laugh and the ability to make things more interesting. Whether it was your way of making a story sound more exciting or the fact that odd situations did legitimately happened to you, life around you was more fun, so it was no wonder we became friends during the SCCA years.
Unfortunately, we weren’t always the best balances for each other during those days, as we would get into conflicts with many of the female members of our class because one of us would make a ridiculous statement and the other would follow suit. I still can’t hear the terms “hunk” or “seismic belts” without chuckling.
We fell out of touch as high school started. We each were carving out our own niches at new schools. You did a bit better with that than I did. Even though I’ve gotten better with age, I’ve never been the quickest to adapt to change. However, as sophomore year rolled around, we found ourselves on opposite ends of a battle that neither of us really started. Once we were entrenched in the battle, neither of us relented, and things got personal. In hindsight, it was a dumb battle, but when you’re that age every battle feels as urgent as Armageddon.
As quickly as the battle started, it ended. I remember you approaching me at youth one night to make a comment about something I had written on my old website. I had no idea what you were going to say, and I was uneasy that you were going to say something unkind. But that was the start to repairing the friendship, and that was the catalyst to the summer of 2003, which is still far and away the best summer of my life.
You are the one friend I probably have the most stories to tell my hopeful hypothetical grandchildren about. From the church sleepover fiasco to driving down Ridgeland with “Vertigo” to yelling at the kid with one lung to go faster on the obstacle course, there are a lot of laughs and a lot of good memories.
After trying a few things out, you finally decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. As a result, we see each other and hear from each other a lot less. During that time, we’ve had a couple mild to moderate fallings-out which can largely be attributed to my acerbic tongue and my penchant for poorly-timed one liners. There have been times where I thought I was going to see you when you were back, only for it to fall through. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, our friendship is like a boomerang. No matter how far out it gets, it always comes back. And I appreciate that. Like I said to Rex, I'd be honored if you stood in my wedding someday.
If there’s one piece of advice I can give you as someone who has known you for almost a quarter century, it is this: believe in yourself, and be proud of yourself no matter what anyone else says. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been a people pleaser. You’ve done a lot of things for the approval of others. It was always fun to go shopping back in the day because I knew I could convince you to buy something ridiculous (Exhibit A: Bach in a Minuet). You have all the ability in the world. If you want to be a lifelong Marine, then you’ll succeed at that. If you want to leave the Corps and go back to school, I have no doubt that you’ll excel at that. But whatever you do, don’t do it because you think you have to or because someone will think less of you if you don’t. Those of us who care about you don’t need you to do things for our benefit. We believe in you and support you matter what. Thanks for making my life interesting all these years, and thanks for being my friend.
All the best,
Jakob
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