Alright, so to understand the whole idea i’m trying to get across here, we have to go back. Back to freshman year, late August 2011, it was the first day of high school. I had just come off of being kicked out of my old schoolfor “bad behavior”. First thing I do, being the awkward kid I can be at times, walk right up to the first kid I see and introduce myself with a handshake. This kids name was Derek. Luckily for me, that introduction with Derek, lead to meeting her.

Somehow the stars aligned since Derek and I both had Health class first period together, that way I wouldn’t have to have that awkward introduction with anyone else. So, we walk up to class together and Derek immediately recognizes three girls in the back of the class; Kandice, Grace, and Hannah. Of course, Derek being the gigantic ball of energy that he is decides to run back to the last row of desks where the girls were sitting and as soon as his butt hit that seat his mouth started going off. In the three years since, Derek’s mouth has calmed down a bit, but he is still an insane, crazy, extremely enthusiastic man. So, we have Derek going off, introducing me to these girls, he had gone to middle school with them. Unbeknownst to him, I already knew these three. Over a decade ago, I met them in elementary school. They certainly had changed since then and so have I. Only one of them caught my eye though. She was always the smart one, always the one to have the right answer on a question, the one who would never be afraid to correct someone who was wrong, the one I immediately developed a crush on; Hannah.

So, to understand me, you have to realize that i’m not afraid to say what’s on my mind when it comes to other people, but when it comes to expressing myself, that’s where I have problems sometimes. Somehow, I managed to gain enough courage to ask her to homecoming. I still do not know how I managed to do that. That night was phenomenal, just being with her in the cute dress, her hair all done up, and light makeup. The best memory I have of that night is the slow dance with her, just being so close. Well, that and when she was arguing with Mr. Page over the ingredients in a drink he had made. Not a bad first homecoming if you ask me. Well after that, I now needed to build up the courage to ask her out for real, to become a “thing”. That’s where I screwed up. Approximately 3 weeks or so later, she has a boyfriend. Boy was I devastated. There goes my opportunity. I still was going to be her friend though, since she was still an awesome person to talk to and hang around with.

So the next two years had been a blur, I went on with school stuff, Math League, World Quest, attempted IB, but most importantly of all, I was still her friend. While I had my ups and downs, she had worse. Sadly, her mother had passed away from a long struggle of MS and she had to move back in with her dad and “wicked” step-mother. No matter what, I stuck with her. If she ever needed a shoulder to cry on, I was there. If she ever needed someone to just talk to, I was there. If she needed anything at all, I was there for her. Now, being the type of guy I am, I don’t really give up easy. I don’t give up easily when it comes to people, I always try to help them if they are sad, I always try to calm them down when they are angry, and I always listen if they have a problem they need someone to talk to. I don’t know why but I had like 4 or 5 different girls who I was friends with came to me for advice, her included. When it came to her though, while trying to be the best friend I could possibly be, I always maintained that crush on her.

Fast forward to early February 2015. Hannah’s boyfriend of two years had dumped her (I always detested that kid anyway). There I stepped in, not to swoop in like a vulture on the scraps of carcass, but as a friend trying to be there for a friend in need of someone to talk to. Of course I still had my feelings for her, but I wanted her to be happy before I tried anything. There were nights where we texted until four in the morning, just me trying to make her happy, to see the beautiful smile that I love to see. Of course, with it being February, Valentine’s Day rolls around. I had no intention of taking her out to anything since I wanted to give her space and time to think. My mother had other plans. She knew I was friends with Hannah and that she had recently gone through a bad break-up so she suggested to Hannah that we should go out to eat and see a movie together. So in the end, it was my mother who made the first move not me, how lame is that to say? The plan on Valentine’s Day was to go dinner at Friendly’s and go see the Paddington Bear movie. The highlights of that day are both greatly important to me. First off, I put my arm around her at the movie. It took me 10 minutes of giving myself an internal pep talk. I never thought in my wildest of dreams that one day I would be at the movies with my arm around Hannah. Secondly, during lunch, she had a nosebleed at the table. It’s weird to say it, but it was so adorable with her being so red faced and frantically covering her nose.

Now, I had to take the next step, what I had failed to do 2 years prior. I had a second chance to go out with the girl of my dreams. Over the next week and a half, we talked. We talked about how we were going to move forward. We told each other how we felt towards each other and made a plan to tell each other in school the next day, she prefers to talk about things like this in person rather than over the phone. So we met in the stairwell during third period on February 23rd. We gazed into each other’s eyes, we said to each other that we liked each other very much, and we did what we felt was right. We kissed. Three days later, on the 26th, we started going out.

My nearly three year long journey that started the first day of freshman year and ended that cold thursday afternoon. What irks me sometimes is that people quit too early. There are times in life where it may seem impossible that you may succeed, but it is extremely important to persevere and keep trying no matter what. Quitting and giving up are the same thing as losing. If you give up over something small, what’s stopping you from quitting on something big like college, or that promotion at work, or that girl that keeps escaping you. Never give up and don’t quit, no matter the opposition.