A million hellos

Sometimes people come into your life and you just know they're going to mean a lot to you, other times they just sneak in and before you know it, they have earned this place in your heart where it seems like they've always been. The story of a boy and a girl is never simple. It always starts that way though.  A simple hello can turn into wanting a million more. I've always been one to protect my heart at any cost, even when it comes to my friendships, I only let people get so close to me. It's hard to invest in things that you're not sure of. I know life isn't always predictable, and sometimes you get hurt, but I've found myself doing a little math equation before I decide to invest in someone. This sounds bratty maybe, but when I decide to be someones friend, I'm all in, I pour everything into that person and try my hardest to build them up and really know them, beyond the external facade that people are always trying to present. There's nothing I love more than that moment when someone is actually vulnerable and shows you all sides of them, both good and bad. The acceptance of knowing that someone has seen that side of you and still wants to be your friend is so liberating.

Unconditional love has always been something I have wanted to give freely. I think it's what I'm always looking for in other people too. Finding something like that is so rare. I think Anne of Green Gables called them kindred spirits. She was so smart, I wish she was real. When you started to mean a lot to me, I tried racking my brain, desperate to remember the very first time I noticed you. Much later I would remember, after stumbling across a journal entry from 2009. I was feeling really low at the time, things didn't work out with me and a boy in another state and I was having a hard time accepting it. I had just started attending a tiny church in the inner city and was helping out in the nursery. For some reason being around babies is so comforting to me, there's something about holding someone so close to you and knowing that they depend on you that gets to me. I've always found that helping someone else is good for me, it stops me from continuing in a self centered frame of mind.

My journal entry went something like this, "Thank you God for giving us friends, families, and babies to fill in those gaps when we feel unloved and alone and you can't physically be here for us." When I was rereading this entry my mind flashed to the inspiration for this entry. It was the image of a teenage boy, holding his little brother in his lap. The little boy was almost too big to be held, but he was smiling from ear to ear and you could tell he loved and admired his older brother so much. You were that teenage boy, and a little sliver of hope for me that day. I guess I'm just setting this all up to tell you about the boy who gave and took, the one who caught me off guard and changed everything.  He's the reason I'm so stuck. He got to me, he changed my list, he changed his mind.