LOVE from Kellie
Our story began when Gates and I met in Spanish class our Sophomore year at Quincy Senior High School . Our first conversation was by the archaic way of passing hand-written notes back and forth during class . I was immediately intrigued with this shaggy-haired boy that wrote in cursive , had an interesting middle name , and a birthday on Christmas . While there was certainly some romantic interest at first sight , it was not smooth sailing from the get-go . Shortly after our friendship took off , I found out my family was moving from Quincy to Milwaukee at the end of the school year .
As we weren ’ t willing to commit to anything serious and I was moving away , we resolved to forgo any romantic intentions and just be friends . And we became quite good friends ! Living miles away and figuring that I ’ d never see him again made it easier for me to open up to him . Gates was like a secret friend I had in my back pocket ; someone entirely separate from the current high school drama and who I could talk to about anything and everything .
And so our friendship grew over the next few years ; texting and snapchatting like teenagers in the early 2010 ’ s did . Soon enough , we were off to college , simultaneously learning how to live on our own and commiserating over classes and papers , while still living many miles apart and never seeing each other . That was , until I had a weekend trip back to Quincy and we coordinated to meet up during the visit . It was the first time we were going to see each other since I had moved away . It felt like a big deal ; I was both nervous it was going to be weird in person and also excited to see my friend I hadn ’ t seen in nearly three years . We finally met up for smoothies and … it was awful . Without digging into the messy details , we departed that weekend with our friendship in shambles . We had a falling out , and stopped speaking to each other .
Obviously , the story doesn ’ t end there ( thank God !). For over a year , Gates and I didn ’ t speak at all , which was a stark contrast to speaking nearly daily when we were friends . Until one day , I was in my weekly bible study and my bible study leader challenged me to take a “ leap of faith ” somehow over the next week . To be honest , I wasn ’ t exactly sure what a “ leap of faith ” should look like , but I wanted to try to meet the challenge and thus decided on reconciling old relationships that had been broken . There were four relationships I had in mind : one of which was my broken relationship with Gates .
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