The Hardest Goodbye


Although some of you may argue with this, I'm not very good at making friends. I'm really awkward and often give off bad first impressions and so it's sometimes hard for me to get people to like me enough to call me a friend. Or at least I feel like it is.

So when I walked into the first day of my physics class at the beginning of my junior year of high school, I was definitely not expecting to meet someone who would become my closest friend, and who would force me to say such a hard goodbye less than 24 months later.

Allow me to introduce the one and only Jacob Angeletti.

I met Jake on the second day of junior year but didn't really talk to him for a few weeks as I was trying to figure things out and get accustomed to a new school. For a while, the extent of our conversations would be me asking how to do a problem and Jake easily explaining it to me (physics was not an incredibly hard class for me, but any time I struggled I could count on Jake to help it make sense).
But as the months passed, our friendship grew. We hung out regularly and often tried (and failed) to go on double dates.

(Quick interruption: Jake and I tried to go on double dates ALL the time. But it seemed like something always got in the way, whether it was our lack of motivation or one of us/our dates cancelling or our indecisiveness when it came to girls to ask, we struggled. Grand total, we probably only went on two or three double dates, even though we probably tried like fifteen times.)

Anyway. Jake is a really cool guy and I often felt incredibly undeserving of his friendship. Legitimately, I questioned (quite regularly) how I could be friends with Jake and sometimes wondered to myself if he was just friends with me to be nice. I can only hope that he genuinely liked me.

The thing is, Jake is the sickest kid. He's (and I'm saying this as a straight guy) a really attractive dude and could definitely slay all the women he wanted, but he figured that girls weren't really worth his time sometimes.
The thing you need to understand about Jake is that he is an incredibly laid-back person. He's not exactly apathetic, but he just takes things as they come and he doesn't really worry about things too much. And I think this is part of why I like him so much. With other people, there was always some sort of drama or issue they were dealing with. But with Jake, life was always chill and he was just having a good time.
One of the other biggest parts of Jake Angeletti is soccer. Jake is an incredibly gifted soccer player, and he's so fun to watch. With his club, he's won the state championship four times, and he's traveled all over to play in some incredible tournaments. As you would expect, Jake generated some interest from college soccer coaches, and during our senior year Jake would have people contacting him from various schools asking if he wanted to come check out their programs. Although I don't know the complete list, I know their were multiple schools interested in his flawless body... er... I mean his soccer skills.

Which is where the hard part comes in.
After several months of decisions and many long discussions, Jake finally decided to join the soccer program at the Air Force Academy. This is an incredible opportunity, because the Air Force's soccer team is not only a Division I team, but it's a GOOD Division I team.

So Jake decided to go to the Air Force, and all was well. Until the reality hit that this meant he would have to leave, and I would have to say goodbye.

The thing is, I've been saying a lot of goodbyes lately. As naturally comes by graduating high school, I know there are a lot of people I won't see again, at least not for a long time. People are going in their separate directions, and I should have seen this coming.
I knew for months that Jake was going to have to leave to go to the Air Force, and he told me multiple times that it would be the end of June when he was leaving for Basic Training. But somehow, the end of June always seemed so far away, until suddenly, it wasn't.

I don't know exactly how to convey this in words, but no other human being has ever meant as much to me as Jacob Lee Angeletti meant to me. He was the friend I could ALWAYS depend on, and I knew he was always there for me. So having to say goodbye to him was just about the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
So this past week, I spent as much time with Jake as possible. We hung out almost every day, and we both knew that the end was coming. But we tried not to think about it too much.

But sometimes it's hard to block out the future, so I let it in.
Saturday night, after hanging out with Jake for a little while at a farewell party for another one of our friends and then going to a different friend's house for sparklers and stargazing, I went home. And the thought came to me that I had less than 48 hours left with my best friend. So that sucked. But what made it worse was the fact that Jake texted me and said "Why are goodbyes literally the most trash things?" Jake had just had to say goodbye to someone that meant a great deal to him because she was leaving on a trip and they wouldn't see each other again before he left.

And this killed me, because it was the first time I had seen Jake truly hurting from having to leave. Of course he probably realized how sucky this scenario was for a while, but he always hid it through some humor or some other distraction.

But that night, I saw through the cracks, and it broke me.

You see, I'm not a very emotional person, or at least I don't cry very often. I'm not heartless or anything and I don't put on a face to seem more manly or anything, I just don't really cry. But that night, I visualized saying goodbye to Jake and it just wrecked me. And I lost it. The tears wouldn't stop flowing, and it just hurt so much.
But it hurt because Jake means so much to me. It hurt because I love that kid more than I've ever loved anyone before, and the tears flowed because I didn't want it to end.

And so I figured something out from all of this. If I had the choice to erase the pain, I would absolutely NEVER take it. Because that would mean that I would delete all the good times I had with Jake Angeletti, and there's no way I would ever do that.
Jake leaving broke my heart harder than any girl ever could. But I would take that heartbreak every single time if it meant I got to keep the memories and the friendship that Jake gave me.

Although I hate that he had to leave so soon, I'm so grateful for him and I am so excited to see how things go for him. It's going to be a wild ride for him, and I'm pumped.
If you ever see this, Jake, just know that I'm with you every single step of the way. Just like you were for me. Godspeed.
-GD




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