An intense feeling of deep affection, feeling a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. Have you ever had a weird, fluffy feeling in your stomach? Not just a fuzzy feeling but about one hundred rushes of emotion flowing through your body? When you look into someone’s eyes and he notices and so you look away but then you notice he is staring back at you. The butterflies go crazy bouncing back and forth from each side of your stomach. The feeling of that one single person looking into your eyes can make you feel totally different. Or how about when you are sitting next to that one person that you know you like and his hand just simply touches yours. The chills and goose bumps that ride up your body that feels like a rush of cold air hitting you and making your skin feel all sorts of tingly feelings. When you see that person smile at you, you just want to melt into the ground and lie down in the puddle of your melted body forever. When the person hugs you and talks to you, you just feel safe, calm and welcomed. To max out every feeling is when the person kisses you. Nothing can compare to the kiss. Not just your average kiss but a kiss that you feel like you two are the last people on the earth or as if no one was around you for thousands of miles. Everyone at one point in his or her life will experience this amazing feeling. Do you wonder what this feeling could be? Don’t know what I am talking about? Love. Love is the feeling of all feelings in the world in my opinion. It takes all your emotions that you could ever have and crams it into one thing. The craziest thing is that it doesn’t even have to be all about kissing or touching in any way. It could just be the possibility of looking at something.

Growing up I had a sense of feeling what love was. Getting woken up by my mother and father saying good morning to my sisters, brothers and me. The connection between my family was everything to me. I did not grow up having everything in life and neither did anyone in my family. We learned to cope with one another and how to get along and when the right and wrong time to do things was. As I aged and slowly started developing more feelings and emotions, I noticed there was a lot more when it comes to romantic love.

One day I was at a volleyball open gym with my girls’ volleyball team. We had a girl from Towanda High School come with one of the girls to just play for fun because she was not a volleyball player; she was just Bree’s friend. I walked up to this girl Erica and introduced myself. As the day went along and we all hung out, Erica said, “I have a gay friend that I feel you would love, Jordan.” I looked at her and said, “Oh, really,” in an under-held excited voice of happiness. A few days later Erica ended up adding me to Facebook. Of course, I friended her and as soon as I did that I followed with a direct message to her asking what her friend’s name was. “Jacob Hines,” Erica replied to me right away just knowing I would want to know as soon as possible. I searched him and then added him to my Facebook. He added me back quickly. Within no time Jacob and I were talking up a storm of what we like to do, our favorite foods, our families, etc. We clicked, we just clicked like we have known each other for years. Living 45 minutes apart from each other made things seem a little complicated, but it eventually was like a walk down the road from both of our parents’ houses.

I met Jacob face to face on June 8, 2011. His mother and he both came to my mother’s work and met me there. Our mothers met and talked while we all stood in a circle. While our parents chatted up a storm, we were speechless when it came to seeing each other for the first time. Making eye contact, we wanted to speak and say something to one another, but the words would just not come out of our mouths, so he ended up just smiling most of the time which of course made me smile and blush. We finally parted from my mother. Jacob, his mother and I all hopped into his mother’s silver 2011 van and took off to Lowes because his mom needed to pick up some supplies for her business. Sitting next to each other in the back seat made us sit close to each other. Of course, we wanted to be like that but we 'were just so shy knowing this was both of our first relationships with a guy ever. Slowly I felt his hand move towards mine and my hand at that time just had a mind of its own, and it grabbed his hand. He smiled at me, and I smiled back at him, instantly he looked away and down as he was still smiling and also blushing. His eyes took me into him with a connection, and his smile made me want to play in that puddle of myself on the ground, and his touch made ‘me feel like I was finally connected with someone I enjoyed.

After about a month went by we decided to take it to the next step- dating. During that month we kept doing the same thing; he and his mom would come pick me up, we would run errands, go back to his house, watch movies, eat together and then they would take me back home.

So the date of July 22nd, 2012 is when my life changed. I got picked up by his mother and got out of school early that day. His mother and I rushed to his school and got all of the band kids together, to add that Jacob was the Drum Major of Towanda High School Band. We gathered all of the kids together which everyone knew what the plan was while also the office was holding Jacob in there not letting him out and just talking with him to distract him. As his mother and I got all of his friends, classmates, and band into their main gym, they all sat on the bleachers. Spread out through the crowd of high school kids we handed out signs that said “Jacob” on them. Finally, it was time, the office released Jacob out of the office and told him that he was to go to the gym because that is where his mother was talking to his gym teacher at which was a lie of course. As Jacob entered his face lit up in shock, the kids started chanting “Jacob, ” and he was laughing, smiling and also blushing as he started walking across the gym not knowing what to say or do. The gym was deafening like if someone famous was in the gym or something with them chanting “Jacob, Jacob” As he walked towards me, standing all the way on the other side of the gym holding a huge sign that said, “will you go out with me?” He started to cry tears of joy of how happy he was with what was going on. He got to me and hugged me and then kissed me in front of everyone as he followed with saying “yes!” with tears running down his face. It was almost as if I just proposed to someone or at least that's what it felt like and how big of a deal his mother and I made it out to be. At that moment when he kissed me, I felt weak because of that then and there in the Towanda High School gym was our first kiss, our first but not our last. Time flew by, day after day, month after month, even year after year. I would be at his house every weekend all weekend. His family was like one of my own, We went on vacation together, we shared birthdays together since Jacobs was only three days before mine, we did just about everything together. After our one year anniversary of July 22nd, 2012 things started to feel weird. Not between Jacob and myself but with Jacob and his family.

Months passed in the year of 2012 and Jacob started missing school and always being tired which was not like him at all. After a while, I figured I would talk to his mom one to one and find out what was going on because it was a constant thing that I would come over to his house over a weekend like I always did but then he would sleep and feel sick a lot. Sitting down with her after about half of a year seeing all of these things take the place of him missing school and being sick we finally got to speak to each other one to one with no one around us. She looked me in the eyes and started crying, not knowing what to do I hugged her and asked her if she would please talk to me about what is going on. In that time she replied with the worst thing any young 16 years old would want to hear “Jacob has stage 3 cancer,” she said as tears were rushing down her face. Something that no one seen coming not his Doctors, friends nor family. I- I cried, I cried for hours and hours with his mother, then I went into his bedroom where-Jacob was sleeping around 3 pm and sat next to him on the side of the bed where I always sleep when I stayed the night and cried longer. Seeing him lay there knowing what was going on with his life and not being emotional whenever we were together showed how strong he was. Thinking about things I thought to myself that the only way I could make him feel comfortable about talking about things that he is going through with me is if I was strong as well just like he was around me. At times it was hard, we both would break down and cry together, but other times we let it fly right over our heads and ignored it and lived our lives day by day together.

As the chemo started and him being hospitalized over the next few months that went by. Things seemed to be getting better as time went by, but then we always had the worst thought implanted into our heads. I remember every day and night sitting by him in his bed, laying with him, caring for him when a nurse was not there right away, and most of all keeping him protected. Keeping him safe was my number one thing to do at that point in my life. Juggling my school work, family problems, and to add on seeing the most amazing boy in my life in the worst stage of his life it was hard on me. No matter what I always told myself when I was around him that everything was going to be okay and nothing would stop him from getting better. He was just such a strong character, and I could never see something over power him. After a while things had started going downhill, he lost all of his hair, was sleeping longer than before, sometimes went unresponsive and worst of all, memory loss.

Memory loss is hard to cope with because it’s multiple things at once. Not only forgetting what he had for breakfast, lunch or dinner but also forgetting names. I remember coming into Jacobs hospital room after school one day like I did everyday soon as I got out of school and Jacob looked at me funny after I gave him a hug like I would always do. He looked at me for a good thirty seconds and then asked, “Who are you?” Nothing hurts more than when someone looks at you in a way that you have never been looked at by that one person and asks you that. After already being together well over two and a half years you would think, how on earth could he forget? It tore me apart piece by piece whenever that memory would play in my head. He randomly would get his memory back and sometimes would lose it. It could be for days where he would not know who I was or just a few hours. I eventually got used to it after a few days of having to pretend that I was just a family friend when he did not know who I was. Even all of that I still never left him nor would I ever.

There comes a time in your life where you realize that life is too short to take for granted. You would live everyday like it’s your last. Make your trademark where ever you stood and made sure everyone knows who you are. Do everything to your best ability and to leave a huge impact on as many people as possible. Make sure you prove to everyone how strong hearted and powerful you were no matter where you stepped. Just all of that is what Jacob Hine's did every day of his life no matter where he was. Jacob Hines, the love of my life, will never be forgotten and will always be missed from the day that he upsettingly passed away on July 17th of 2014.

I have learned a lot of maturity in my life and how to grow after seeing what can happen to one of the most amazing people in my life. People come and go in life, some longer than others. At the end of the day, you can think to yourself and find who has made a difference in you. Jacob with myself, he made one of the largest impacts in my life. Almost every day I think about him at least once a day missing his good morning selfies he would take for me if I were not there next to him or his “I don’t want to be going to school” sad faces he always pulled with me so I would come get him out of school.

An intense feeling of deep affection, feeling a deep romantic or sexual attachment to something or someone, I repeat. This is the definition of love and after going through the good and the worst times is when I realized what love was with someone. To add I chose my volleyball number all of my life since the day I started dating him and till this day in college I still that same number. Seven is the month in which I started dating Jacob and I will never forget that month of building our friendship and making into a relationship. This shows that you should never take life for granted and you should make an impact on everyone around you. I’ll never forget Jacob Hines.