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 Stacie,
The fact that we are friends today defies any sort of logic or reason. Logically, it never should have reached this point.
The way we met is easily THE strangest way I have met anyone. The fact it worked is even stranger. I saw you in a school newspaper and subsequently searched for you on MySpace, and you were okay with it. That still blows my mind to this day. But there was something about that newspaper article that made you seem so captivating. You weren’t just someone I wanted to meet. You were someone I had to meet.
When you meet someone in a way as awkwardly as we did, you’d expect the friendship to be a bit awkward (if it ever materializes at all). Somehow, that didn’t happen. We hit it off right away, and we made a pretty deep connection. Despite the fact that we got along so well and only lived 15 minutes apart, it took us about a year and a half to meet in person. For you, that was probably the worst thing that could happen!
After we met, I stopped thinking of you just as a friend and instead as someone that I REALLY wanted to be with, like in a super overbearing creepy kind of way. You were fine with us being friends, but you didn’t want any of that for multiple reasons.
You finally wrote me a letter that explained your reasons for not wanting to date me. That letter altered the course of my early adult years. During college, I had let myself go. I was significantly heavier than I had been at any point in my life. You let me know that you were not physically attracted to me in the slightest. That immediately made me want to be better. You were the catalyst for my drastic weight loss. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I was on the elliptical in 2008, I would visualize you being at the finish line. That’s what got me through my workouts.
We definitely weren’t in the same place in 2008. You had your struggles, and I was struggling to find myself. I still lacked an understanding of people, and I didn’t realize my methods weren’t working. All of a sudden, you were out of my life, and I wasn’t really even sure why.
Being the guy that I am, I never take a closed door as such, so I got the bright idea to go visit you at Oberweis to show you my new svelte self. Bad idea! I had to wait forever for that milkshake. By that point, I thought the door was closed for good.
By the time I was done student teaching in November 2008, I felt like I was on top of the world and that I could accomplish anything, so I added you on Facebook again. I didn’t expect you to accept. I definitely didn’t expect you to consent to doing dinner with me in February 2009. All of a sudden we became friends, and it was amazing.
We got to see each other once a month or so for a couple years. I’d never take back those memories for anything. It was during a time of my life where I really needed someone to be there for me. You were there, and I had the privilege to see you grow as a person right before my eyes.
You changed my life. In 2008, I knew I needed to change in order to function in life. The way I was going about things just wasn’t going to work any longer. Whether it was my eating habits, my lack of confidence in myself, or my odd methods of pursuit, I knew I had to do something. However, the knowledge that change is necessary doesn’t always lead to change. There has to be a spark, a reason to make it happen. You were my reason. I stopped thinking about the man I wanted to be, and I actually started being that man. I’m not fully there yet, but I was able to move in that direction thanks to you.
One of my favorite songs says “The end will justify the pain it took to get us there.” Our friendship took quite the circuitous route to get to its ultimate destination. No matter how hard things were, our friendship has ALWAYS been worth it. I know I probably exasperated you, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some hurt I felt along the way. But through it all, I never stopped caring about you. Over the years, I’ve finally seen you realize what I’ve known all along: there is a strength within you greater than you often recognize. It is that strength that allowed you to not only return to school but to succeed. It is that strength that allowed you to study halfway across the world. Things like that aren’t easy for introverts unless they’re strong. You’re strong, my dear. You always have been.
I’ve never looked at you the way you look at yourself. I’ve always seen the best. Thank you for helping me to look at myself in different lights as well.
Love always,
Jakob
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