What is High School?

Chapter Twenty: Junior Year: Seth Harris, A Different Kind of Love

I met Seth through another kid who started talking to me. From the second he started talking to me he was welcoming and open and warm and bubbly and funny. He was so willing to talk and so open about everything. He was bright and just brought a smile to everyone's face.

The love I felt for him wasn't like the kind that some girls felt for him. It wasn't a romantic type of love, it was more intense than that. It was a more familiar love than brotherly love.

It was a love that was in a category of its own. I talk about what an amazing person Seth is and the good he's done for others, but I've never gotten into the good he has done for me.

I hate social situations, it was so hard for me to find a group in a PE activity. So he looks at me and says "You don't have a group [dead name]?" and I respond no. So he smiles and says "Come join us" and I did. I never laughed more in a PE period than I had that day. I waited outside of the boy's locker room every day for him and hung out with him. I even hung out with him outside of PE and walked home with him.

He meant the world to me.

He was my world for the longest time.

But it wasn't that kind of love.

It was a different kind of love.

It was the kind of love that made my day better as my brain goes "oh there's my brother!". It was the kind of love that made my heart explode and made me want to hug him everytime I see him.

I confided in him with everything. He was always there to put an arm around me and just be there. He was my support system without even knowing it. He walked me home because I didn't want to walk by myself. He sat with me at the store for half an hour so I wouldn't have to wait for my mom by myself. He offered me a vape when I was stressed. He was my everything.

All my memories of him are happy. Yeah, we've fought. But what friends don't? We got over it fairly quickly.

Now he's gone. It's been almost two years and I've just barely begun to accept it. The only reason why is because I dreamt about him. I don't remember what the dream was about, but I remember how it felt. How real it felt.

Then I screamed in his face, "DON'T TAKE THE PILLS! DON'T TAKE THE PILLS!"

He replies calmly... "Seb...I'm gone..."

I woke up...and I cried...and I cried...and cried until I couldn't breathe and I had to concentrate on breathing and calming myself down.

I've just begun to accept that he's gone...

But that different love...can never go away.