Teach me to love

Teach+me+to+love

I always have my family, I won’t complain about that. I just didn’t have any friends when I was younger. I know what you are thinking: “Savannah you are so nice and cool how could you not have friends when you were younger?” The simple truth of it is that I just didn’t. Then one moment this all changed.

During my freshman year, I went on a school trip to St. Louis, Missouri not knowing my life was going to change. The hotel was enchanting, but when I met Maddi Bell for the first time, I hoped to see that kind of beauty every time I see her smile. It was kind of an accident that we met. I got kicked out of my hotel room and she was nice enough to let me stay with her and her friends. I think she just felt sorry for me. The room was crowded so I slept on the stale carpet with a thin layer of a sheet and a decorative pillow tucked beneath my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, I saw her gigantic eyes looking intensly into her phone. I wanted to give her my gratitude for letting me stay with her but the only thing that escaped my lips were “you’re pretty.”

After the trip, we continued on with our separate lives. I mean she already thought I was awkward and creepy for staring at her and calling her pretty. One day where I couldn’t find a ride home I noticed her laughing across the hall and figured since Maddi was nice to me before, maybe she could do it again. So I passed that invisible wall I have been hiding behind my whole life and asked her. Besides, it’s not like she would want to be my friend. It was just a simple ride home. When I popped the question, her face lit up and replied “absolutely!” That was my moment that everything changed for the better. It meant so much to me because in that instance, Maddi opened up to me and let me in by giving me a ride home.

Maddi gave me a chance to let myself blossom to be the best vision of myself which was something nobody gave me. This led me to believe my whole life that I was never going to truly be myself around the people that I could soon learn to care about. We went to Sonic the first time she took me home from school and we talked about the things we both love and hate. Our connection was like a flowing river that seems never ending until it’s time for me to get out of the car. She payed for our drinks and took me home and told me “we should do this again.” Who am I to say no to my first official friend? Just saying yes led to morning coffee runs and rushing to get to school on time without getting in a car crash.

It was a foreign thing, to be smacked with that kind of tenderness. Maddi’s compassion everyday for absolutely everything, over time, morphed me into caring and evolving into who I wanted to be. To see the world as not what it is, but what could be better is how Maddi saw life through her gigantic glasses. I believed that there was nobody in this life that would look at me twice but Maddi did. I’m not someone who shows how I feel most of the time because I still have ties to myself by being anti-social. What stumps me everyday is how does Maddi do it? How does a person, my own special person, make me feel so happy to be alive. I believe that something led me to her just as she believes i presence is like a weird mystical light hovering over you trying to take you to a better life. I believe everybody will find that one person. Their own person to share burdens and sing outdated songs at the top of their lungs while almost being late to school. When the inevitable future comes when Maddi and I might be separated, my best friend has my heart and my happiness and that is the invisible tie that could never separate us.

 

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