Please Be Mine

January 30, 2025

january 30, 2025

Shelly,

It wasn’t a lot. You are not a lot. Nothing is too much when it comes to you.

Do you remember the first time we met? It was the summer before freshman year, at band camp. You might have thought that our first meeting was at lunch that first day, when all of the freshmen huddled together, scared out of our minds around the seniors that showed absolutely no mercy. We sat next to each other, and I was eating a ham and cheese sandwich when I admitted to you that I was freaked out by all of it. You smiled and said that you were in heaven, that everything about being there made your soul sing.

What you don’t know is that I orchestrated our seating arrangement that day, because the entire day before that, I couldn’t stop staring at you. You came into the band room in these cotton candy shorts and a white tank top, your wavy hair tied into a ponytail high on your head. Shelly, you were smiling. The captains screamed at us to do push-ups or to fix our posture or run another lap around the track, yet you smiled the entire way through. You loved every single second of that torture, and I couldn’t help but watch you glow. It was magnetic, and it was hard not want to be around you all the time and experience some of that magic for myself.

That lunch changed something in my teenage heart. It made me realize that despite how hard something is, it should never stop me from loving what I love, and I realize as I write this that it’s probably the reminder that I still need to hear today. (I should let my therapist know. She would be proud.) Things are hard, and I have no idea when they will get better. But that shouldn’t stop me from enjoying parts of my life that I love. Like going to Mulligan’s with Hernandez and eavesdropping on the town gossip. Making Mom’s enchiladas while I blast my favorite music in the house. Writing letters to you.

Yes, it does feel easier to ignore the pain. But the Shelly I know smiles through it, and doesn’t let anything stop her from doing what she loves.

Don’t rob the world from that magical Shelly smile.

Or at least, if anything, share it with me.

Your Jakey Jake