My Dear Friend, Jac.
An ode to friendship
I never realised how much of my later teenage years were impacted by my friendship with Jac.
I met Jac in Year 7 when we were placed in the same electives classes. From what I knew, he seemed very kind and had a tight-knit group of close friends. It wasn’t long into knowing him, however, that he moved to a different high school.
I still can remember his last day. I remember how sad everyone was to see him go, regardless of whether they were friends with him or not. I walked past a massive group of kids hugging him goodbye, wishing him luck at his new school. Thinking back to this, I can see why it didn’t take me long to work out how awesome he is.
Our paths crossed again when he moved back to my school a few years later. Although we weren’t quite friends yet, Jac was in a few of my classes and would often walk past me in the cafe area at lunch and say something nice about my forbidden (Catholic high school… yikes) jewellery or the way I was wearing my hair.
It wasn’t until 2020, in Year 11, when COVID hit and we all went into the first of many lockdowns, that we started getting close. I remember seeing a TikTok that Jac posted of him and a guitar singing a Rex Orange County song in a field and was gobsmacked at his musical abilities that I somehow was completely unaware of. In a lapse of judgement, I reached out to him and asked if he wanted to make a song or perform a cover with me during the lockdown and he said he would love to. Now, normally this wouldn’t be considered a lapse of judgement because Jac is one of the most talented people I know, however I had somehow conveniently forgotten I could not sing or play an instrument half as well as him. To this day, we have not created said song, but you never know… It could happen some day!
When regular school resumed, we started going op shopping every Wednesday after school. It became a tradition for Jac’s dad (much love for Sheldon) to come to school to collect us and then have Jac drive us back into town to gain some extra valuable minutes towards his 100 hour Learner logbook. I cherished our weekly outings, counting down the minutes until the afternoon school bell rung out at 2:43pm precisely. Jac became my special little escape from the dramas of a big high school friend group.
By the time Year 11 was over, my mental health really began to take a turn for the worse. At the beginning of Year 12, I didn’t want to show up for school. There was an instance where one day the school counsellor and my mum had to gently coerce me to get out of the car and go to class. I remember feeling so guilty because I wished so desperately to show up and be happy for Jac, but I just couldn’t do it (it also didn’t help that I had a massive crush on him for a period of time there, but we’re past that now). I would send him random messages begging him to forgive me for being aloof and vacant, and he was always understanding. Regardless, he always made me feel like he was there for me, even when all my stuff felt really isolating.
Things started getting a little better for me as the year went on, however towards the end of high school, there was a period of time where Jac and I weren’t really speaking. It is still a topic we tend to brush past nowadays, but looking back, we both had so much going on within our own lives that it was an inevitable drift. I didn’t quite know where I stood with Jac by the end of high school, but let me tell you, I was beginning to feel the big Jac-shaped hole in my heart growing and growing as time went on.
Even when we weren’t talking, I always found ways to ask mutual friends about what he was getting up to in our first year out of high school. I recall running into him the day before my 18th birthday after not seeing him for 4 months or so and feeling so strange. Nonetheless, I made my sister secretly check in and see what he was up to for me, just so I could make sure he was doing well.
As fate would have it, I entered a competition to win a double pass to a Steve Lacy gig in November last year to snag another ticket for one of my friends, and won! Being left with one spare ticket, I called Jac with zero hesitation. The foundation of our bond was music, and we mutually obsessed over Steve Lacy so he seemed like the perfect candidate. In classic Jac fashion, he dropped everything and was there within the following two hours. We sat in line together for about 4 hours, chatting about what we’d achieved since we last spoke, what our plans were for the future — it felt like no time had passed when we were finally reunited.
Ever since, we’ve become inseparable. Being super fancy and sophisticated adults has proven planning things to be way more difficult than in high school but we make it work. Jac is the type of friend that no matter what, they’ll stick with you through your shit, even if you don’t deserve it. Whenever I’m compelled to apologise about how hard I was to deal with in high school, Jac brushes it off and reminds me that I was just a kid dealing with typical kid stuff. He’s so forgiving, I don’t think I could try to get rid of him now, even if I wanted to — he’s here to stay for good!
When I think of Jac, I think of unapologetic, unconditional love. You know those people who you mention their name to anyone and they say “oh! They’re such a beautiful person”? Well, to me, that’s Jac.
We’ve both grown so much together over the past few years. I can’t wait to see where this awesome human goes in the coming years.
If you don’t have a Jac in your life, you should start looking for one.
