There’s this guy who’s been in my life for a few years now. We have never gotten along, and have huge fights at least once a year. He’s a mean jerk who only does nice things when its in his best interest. We’ve spent the last three years in the same sort of friend group, though, so we’re always together. We always have to work together on big projects for our friend’s mom’s STEM outreach program. In the past semester, I’ve come to realize that even though we don’t get along well, he’s always there for me when it counts. He’s stayed up late helping me with a project he has nothing to do with, and takes no credit for it. We never went to the same school or anything (I went to college early and he stayed in high school doing a bunch of AP stuff), but everyone I know at his school says he acts particularly different around me. They say he’s the worst to me and even his mom has told me that he takes stuff out at me the way that teenagers take stuff out on their parents. It’s infuriating to be around him. I’ve spent my entire time knowing him waiting for him to graduate and go to college out of state. We went about a month without seeing each other for the first time since I met him, and I found I truly missed him. While I certainly wouldn’t call him my friend, he does mean something to me. I didn’t have a standard high school experience. I mean, I spent my time around professional engineers and doctors working on incredible projects and getting a degree instead of normal stuff like prom. Him and our small friend group were the closest thing I got to being able to be a teenager. Around them, I didn’t have to act mature or smart. They didn’t expect me to know everything, and even though we did things like present to huge companies and accept grants from prestigious universities at elegant ceremonies, we could just be kids around each other…. And he was apart of that. So even though we never got along, and probably never will, I’ll miss him. It’s weird, now that I won’t see him again, I regret not expressing to him that he meant just as much to me as everyone else in our group did.
