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Shelly,

Are you, though? Are you happy in your life?

This is where we are different, Shells. I don’t deserve happiness.

Jake

january 28, 2025

My Jakey Jake,

I can’t stop thinking about our last few letters, and your question. Am I actually happy in my life? Could I really see myself living this way?

I stared at my phone multiple times, wondering if I should call you. It would be so much easier than a letter. I wouldn’t have to wait all of this time to hear your thoughts, and we could have a real conversation. But every time I stared at your name on my screen, I couldn’t do it. It’s easier to write it out and send it. Somehow, it feels less scary. Like what I write here doesn’t count if I’m not saying it out loud. Does that even make sense?

Also, yes. I do have your number on my phone. I could have been texting you this whole time. But I like our letters. I kind of don’t want them to end.

Jake, you absolutely deserve happiness. Those years you said you spent in darkness do not make you unworthy of love. Struggling with mental illness doesn’t take you off the chessboard of life, or whatever other metaphor you want to throw in there. Every person in the world enters a relationship with some kind of baggage, whether it be illness or trauma or debt. There’s always something. Having baggage is normal, Jake. You are also very special. You should be happy. I really, really want you to be happy.

Maybe you’re right. Maybe this life I’m living feels comfortable now, but I won’t be satisfied with it long term. I do want to be with someone, but I have no idea how to open my heart to that again. How do I live with the pain when it’s so much easier to push it aside?

Woah. Getting deep. I’m sorry. That was a lot.

Shelly

january 30, 2025

Shelly,

It wasn’t a lot. You are not a lot. Nothing is too much when it comes to you.

Do you remember the first time we met? It was the summer before freshman year, at band camp. You might have thought that our first meeting was at lunch that first day, when all of the freshmen huddled together, scared out of our minds around the seniors that showed absolutely no mercy. We sat next to each other, and I was eating a ham and cheese sandwich when I admitted to you that I was freaked out by all of it. You smiled and said that you were in heaven, that everything about being there made your soul sing.

What you don’t know is that I orchestrated our seating arrangement that day, because the entire day before that, I couldn’t stop staring at you. You came into the band room in these cotton candy shorts and a white tank top, your wavy hair tied into a ponytail high on your head. Shelly, you were smiling. The captains screamed at us to do push-ups or to fix our posture or run another lap around the track, yet you smiled the entire way through. You loved every single second of that torture, and I couldn’t help but watch you glow. It was magnetic, and it was hard not want to be around you all the time and experience some of that magic for myself.

That lunch changed something in my teenage heart. It made me realize that despite how hard something is, it should never stop me from loving what I love, and I realize as I write this that it’s probably the reminder that I still need to hear today. (I should let my therapist know. She would be proud.) Things are hard, and I have no idea when they will get better. But that shouldn’t stop me from enjoying parts of my life that I love. Like going to Mulligan’s with Hernandez and eavesdropping on the town gossip. Making Mom’s enchiladas while I blast my favorite music in the house. Writing letters to you.

Yes, it does feel easier to ignore the pain. But the Shelly I know smiles through it, and doesn’t let anything stop her from doing what she loves.

Don’t rob the world from that magical Shelly smile.

Or at least, if anything, share it with me.

Your Jakey Jake

february 1, 2025

Jakey Jake,

You know, I’m not convinced that you studied engineering in college. Are you sure you weren’t secretly studying English? Writing prose? Because you have a way of spinning words and making me think. Making me smile. My roommate snapped a photo of me smiling as I read your letter, then printed it and forced me to add it to the envelope. So, enjoy a geeky photo of me in my Tony Stark pajama set, greasy hair in a ponytail, smiling at your letter like a fool. Ignore the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. Apparently that happens when you age.

I don’t remember much about that first week of band camp. I remember it being really hard. I also remember how I desperately wanted to be a captain. Even then, one week into band, I knew I wanted to go all in. I wanted to stand on the field during the awards ceremonies and scream at freshmen to run when they were misbehaving and shape the band into the best they could be. I remember the devastation I felt when I realized I was graduating and it would all be over…then realized I didn’t have to say goodbye to it, and I could continue with band in a new way.

I’m sorry I don’t remember that lunch. But I remember small moments of our friendship being formed. Showing up to your house an hour before a band dinner and helping you and your mom set up that massive buffet. Or that time we all piled into the bed of Hernandez’s truck after practice and drove to get ice cream, how we had to lie down flat in the bed when we saw cops on the road so he wouldn’t get pulled over. We laughed so hard my belly hurt the rest of the night.

In my gut, I know that you’re right. I know that I should choose joy and all of that, to enjoy parts of my life that I love. I do that in small ways. The Tony Spark pajamas are part of a very interesting Shelly that has transformed over the years: a woman who somehow fell in love with Marvel and has theories upon theories about the Multiverse. I’ve watched all of those movies in order at least three times, as well as all of the corresponding TV shows. I haven’t made it to a Comic Con yet, but I really want to. Probably dressed as Captain Marvel, because of course.

I also really love going to coffee shops. But specifically the cozy kind that have lots of pastries slathered in frosting with a plethora of knickknacks and framed photos of people you don’t know lining the walls. I like wearing something comfy and going for a coffee and a pastry and people-watching. It’s my favorite way to explore a new town; you learn so much at their local café. Kind of like Mulligan’s. Does Mariner’s Cove have a café yet, by the way? They should.