I have never felt more myself and more chosen in any year of my life than in 2022. I think of all the possibility, chances, and odds that would have led to today, all the beauty and grace that has come with these waking days, I sit and think about the source. The source of these beautiful days are the people in my life now. In the past, I never really understood or sought out to find the standards I hold for the people around me. I effortlessly made friends and enjoyed their friendship for however long it was meant to last, but those friendships went out as effortlessly as I found them. Sure, this may seem a little depressing to read, but I genuinely do believe that there are people in my life that have helped me become the person I am meant to be, and some of them were never meant to be stick around forever…that doesn’t make me any less thankful for the role they played in my life. But today, I want to highlight the people this year that made me feel special.
andrea & zach
the weekends used to always be just two days that separated the workdays & relationships used to always be a status i wanted to be in. in my eyes, being a third wheel is more of privilege than it is pity, & more of an honor than it is humiliating. i love third wheeling. i love watching my friends fall in love, be in love, and experience all the beautiful and torturous things love has to offer. i have so much love for the both of these people that i want them to be happy individually and together and want to see them succeed in whatever their journey might be. luckily for me, andrea and zach made me apart of their journey.
these two helped me wake up saturday mornings and want to conquer the day. i knew every weekend that i always had plans with these two & i knew that i could be unapologetically and authentically myself. they found as much joy in my presence as i did in theirs, and brought me a since of unity that I had been searching for. I started living for the weekend, excited moday through thursday for what friday through Sunday held; There are many nights that would end with the hope of doing it all again the next day.
Andrea and Zach never let me miss out on what life and our youth had to offer. I thank them for the trust they have in me individually and as a couple, and I treasure all the happiness they brought into my life.
Andrea, you have been my rock all semester. You have been there through many hard and long nights out, you have picked up every FaceTime call made first thing in the morning, you have made your family my family, and you have taught me what it’s like to be a girl’s girl. I am incredibly glad to have come into your life this year and hope for the many that will follow.
Zach, my boyyy!! There are not many people that I would trust with my life, but you are one of them. Time and time again you have shown me your determination for a better life and your commitment you have to your people. You are the one person I know that could genuinely and full-heartedly make me laugh until tears are streaming down my face, and in those moments, it reminds how thankful I am to have you in my life and how unlucky others are for not having someone like you in their lives. You are about to become one of the best soldiers this country has to offer, and I am so glad to have known you. You will accomplish great things, air assault!
tatum
i am the youngest of three, meaning i didnt grow up having a younger sibling that could serve as a best friend. one thing i look for in someone i want to surround myself with are hard workers, and tatum is the hardest worker i know. i have only known her for four months, but man, she is someone i never knew i needed in my life. tatum is the kindest soul i have yet to come across in my life and i am more than amazed in the level of drive and care in this girl.
we clicked instantly and from the minute we first met, i knew she was someone i wanted to bring to the finish line with me. i want her to succeed as badly as i want to succeed; to me, it doesnt matter what success looks like to her, i just want her to have it. i am more than thrilled to be living with this girl in august and i just know that the time spent with her brings an immense amount of peace into my life. as long as she is around, i know nothing can be so bad. please find your tatum, it will serve you greatly.
ethan
I have exasperated all the things I could say about this man through my own words and those that I have written. Despite this, I will try to explain to you why I speak and write about him so passionately in my life. No one on this green earth knows as much about me and my life than Ethan carr knows. i never intended on ever telling him as much I did, let alone anyone, but it happened seamlessly and mindlessly. One day I just noticed myself writing away to a kid sitting in the middle of Missouri, that I had only know for eight months, and how relieving it felt for at least one person in this life to know the inner workings of my mind. subconsciously, I wanted someone to know why I am the way I am, why I think the way I do, and what I wanted for my life. Ethan just happened to be in the right situation for me to do just that.
When Ethan came back home, I had written one final letter; one last pen to paper letter to welcome him home. In this letter I told him that there is a high possibility of me pushing him away because of how much information he knew about me. I explained that him knowing that much about me made me uncomfortable and that I wouldn’t know how to act around him, knowing he knew just about everything about my life. I’d never told anyone, ever, the things I told him, and a piece of myself resented him for breaking away at those walls I so carefully built, without even trying. In my head, for those months he was away, he wasn’t really real. I had imagined that I had been writing to someone that was never going to REALLY come back, that I was writing to an almost Santa-like figment of my imagination; a fictional figure that would never come back to face you after the letters had been received. But he came back, I wrote that letter, and, luckily, we have only gotten closer since.
I don’t think he will ever realize how he had saved the large part of myself that wanted to stay so private about my life. from the outside looking in, I see why our friendship may come across as something that it's not; that my appreciation towards him is something more than it isn’t. But when I look at Ethan, I see the safety and comfort i was not always been provided in my teen years. He is usually the first person I tell any size news to and, for a good while, he will continue to be that for me.
If life ever does the thing it does to many relationships, and one day will go our separate ways, i will always hold him to the highest gratitude and respect. i know i will hope for all his dreams to come true & i will send a prayer out there into the world for them.
Tampa trolls
These people will always be on my list. I have never felt more wanted by a group of people than I do with them. I know in a decade from now, when we may have husbands and wives, maybe even children, but this dynamic will never change. These people will always feel like home to me, and I relied on them heavily this year on trying to help me find who I was again.
I felt like I was apart of a hallmark movie this year. The typical girl from a small town moves away to follow her dreams (go to college), loses who she once was, then has to go back to her hometown and the people from back home helps her find the true meaning of life. Blah blah blah. But that’s how it felt! It took hours of conversation, hours of time spent together, and an unearthly amount of understanding, sympathy, and kindness. I am very thankful for these people year after year after year, and I can’t wait to know them for the rest of my life, and getting to know every version of them in this lifetime.
you all have taught me the value of friendship that no distance or time spent apart can do harm to. y’all have lasted through many transitions in my life and have shown that you will always be there, “an intimacy in friendships that is good for the soul.”
yepes
there’s not a lot of people in this world that will tell you what you need to hear. many pieces of advices & points of admiration are given when they are not earned in the sake of friendship & sparing feelings; we’re human, we want to make people feel better.
i wasn’t my best at the beginning of this school year physically, & it showed. i knew i wasn’t my best & instead of going to someone i knew that was going to give me comfort, i went to the person who was gonna give me a solution, & for me, that person is yep.
yep taught me one of the biggest lessons i need to hear this year, “everyone in life are all cheerleaders.” this is very true. people will have their own opinion of your performance that they will 9/10 tell you about with a little fib of encouragement, but finding the people that will keep you accountable will be the difference between your failure & success.
my feelings were hurt; not because of what he had said, but because of the truth that lived in the words he told me. i am lucky enough to have his wisdom and encouragement everyday, and I know that he will give me the news I don’t want to hear, but will be there to celebrate all the achievements in my life, like I will with his.
luciana
I really came into myself in this friendship, but one thing I learned best from Luciana is the standard I should set for myself with my life. If you ask my friends, they will tell you I don’t make the brightest selections when it comes to men. I came in with way too many stories of failed relationships and situationships to my friendship with Lucy, but lucky for me, so did she. We met while interning this past semester, and every second we weren’t caught up working, we would take the time to share horror stories. I found a lot of healing in these talks, not because I hadn’t shared these stories before with others, but because of how seen I felt when I told them. It seemed like every story I told, she always had one to share to the same caliber and all of these silly stories were just things that were used to make us laugh and let the hours pass.
Luciana is a couple years older than me and she has helped me see the value that I bring to relationships and the standard I should have for myself, in rare case that I should want a relationship in the near future. She is my very own words of affirmation reminder and the admiration that we mutually have for each other will never go unnoticed.
She is now one of my closest friends, and she never fails to pick my head up for me when needed. I believe that your friendships should make you feel more confident in the person that you are, and Luciana has done a great job of building my confidence from the inside out. She sees me in the light that I should always strive to see in myself.
brie
In every life, I know that brie is in it. Out of all these people, she has known me the longest and has wiped more tears, licked more wounds, had more laughs, and have shared more love than anyone in my life. This year, a big theme for the two of us was, “if only our 15 and 17 year old selves could see us now!” Our lives have taken turns that we had never planned for ourselves back then, and I am grateful to God for the way the past couple years have played out for the both of us.
I know that this upcoming year will be an incredibly memorable year for the both of us as she is about to get married in may. I cant help but think of the two high school girls curled up in my bed the night of my sophomore, and her senior year, homecoming, sitting and giggling on the phone with these two boys that we taught would be the love of our lives. We have seen each other fall in and out of love, and I am more thankful to have had the privilege of watching her fall in love with her future husband. We could’ve never written this hand that life has dealt for us, but i'm glad that year after year, I can always count on her being one phone call away and sharing all the seasons of our lives together.
we are both in very different phases in our lives, but we have never let this stop every chance to laugh a little harder and share a little more with every phone call that is shared. Brie will probably watch me fall in love more times than I ever saw her, she will watch me fall in love the way I did at 15, and will be there to pick up the pieces for when I fall out of love. I can full-heartedly say that I love this girl like she is my own blood, and sometimes it’s hard to believe that we aren’t…I mean even are moms are as close as we are. there are many years to come in this friendship, but I do love to go down memory lane with her just to visit all the places we’ve been before we head on down to all the places we are going in life.
grace
i would drop all my plans to go hangout with this girl. the army will create the strongest bonds you will ever have in your life, i’ve seen it in my mom, my friends who enlisted, & i see it in my own life. i am lucky enough to have grace close to me, physically, soulfully, & mentally. she’s often one of the people i go to for advice & to get my spirits lifted when the finish lines seems farther than it really is. I am fortunate enough for her to be everything I hope to be when I grow up and she is there to guide me every step of the way.
ROTC was a scary place, it’s a male dominated space and, as a female, it’s hard to really find your place within all the hooah that's happening around you. Grace was always that stud I wanted to be from the beginning of my rotc career; she was always the end goal for me; I knew my first day of ranger challenge that I wanted to be just like grace one day. It just so happened that we ended up becoming really close, something that I did not expect when I first knew who she was. I thought that grace would always be someone I looked up to but never got the chance to be mentored by, and I am so glad that I was wrong.
I still do want to be like her one day, and I know that she will not only uplift me to be better but to do more. I feel pushed mentally and physically by grace to be the best version I can be of myself and I know that my future holds many accomplishments thanks to her and her support.
hannah
I have my own mini me within Hannah booth. At the beginning of our friendship, many years ago, I felt like I needed to be a role model for her, like I needed to set a good example and be perfect for her. I believed that I needed to say the right words of encouragement, give the best pieces of advice, and be someone that she was proud to look up to. I still hope for the things, but after time, she became my equal. I have seen her grow up, I have shown up to her house on every break I have had and have just told her to scoot over and let me lay with her and sit on my phone, I have become one with her family, and have shown her every side of me.
Hannah recently committed to Webber International University (go warriors!), and I could not be prouder. I see a lot of myself in her and I remind her of it often. She’s about to start her second semester of her senior year and it makes me so emotional just thinking about her becoming an adult. I always saw her like a little sister, someone that wasn’t allowed to grow up and someone you always wanted to protect, but she grew up on me. It snuck up on me this year, how much she has grown as a young woman, and I am so happy to be apart of her journey throughout this life. I never wanted her to make the same mistakes I made and have harped on them a lot to her for her to avoid, but I am now realizing that I cannot protect her from everything, no matter how badly I want to. This feeling of protection and love I have for her reminds me of all the people I looked up to when I was her age and how grateful I was for them for taking me under her wing. I hope to only be a good influence on er and the reminder that she will never be alone as long as I am around.
All these people have different stories, different ways I met them, and different purposes that they serve in my life. But one thing that this group has in common is the amount of love, respect, and admiration I have for all of them. i'm not too sure how celebrities find the way of thanking all the people that contributed to their success in during an acceptance speech, because this was a trip, but there are still so many other people that contributed to my success in 2022. i am so grateful for the opportunity i had to intern for marco rubio and the team i met there, the amazing student leaders in my class council that i am lucky enough to call my friends, my amazing and stunning teammates on the fsu club softball team, all my brother and sisters in arms in the seminole battalion, and all the people i met this last year that linger in the back of my mind on a daily basis; your support and guidance never goes without recognition.I am thankful for all the hands I held this year and thrilled to be walking into the new year with them.
growing up, my mom always told me that family was blood, and I differ form her in this way. As much as I love my own blood family, I have learned that my family is also those that I have chosen, and that have chosen me in return. I have confided in these people who once were strangers to me for the majority of my life, and hope to never hold those titles again. To this group, Thank you for saving me money this year, because who needs a therapist when you have a great group of friends, and thank you for being the people that feel like love.
happy new years everyone! may this be the best one yet!!
with all my love,
♡steff
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