Dear girl who happens to have my skirt and top,

You're one lucky girl. You have access to all the friends and all the memories your high school heart could ever need. You have an outfit that will allow you to smile and laugh when the girls standing next to you won't let you stop. And you have a coach to squeeze you when the buzzer goes off for the last time, and you realize that skirt and top no longer have a purpose when they're in your hands. Here's what I've learned since I left the sidelines.

There is purpose in what you're doing.

I remember cheering beside basketball games thinking what I was doing was worthless. After all, standing on the sidelines saying things that no one can quite understand gets old after a while. But I'm telling you there is purpose in what you are doing. Somebody once told me that high school basketball isn't high school basketball without cheerleaders -- without girls to make a tunnel of poms, to dance to the school song, and to raise the octave of the screams coming out of the bus after a postseason win. And if that isn't enough, the memories you make of falling a hundred times before you finally get a new lift or of yelling so much at a game one night that you wake up voiceless are more than enough.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

So you mess up a move in the dance you've rehearsed for months. You fall from a lift in front of bleachers full of people. Don't sweat it. Odds are nobody saw it, and if they did, odds are they won't remember it by the time the next home game comes around. And pretty soon, nostalgia will let you look back on those nights as nights overflowing with good memories rather than the night you were off count.

Try the things you think you can't.

I owe a portion of who I am now to a few months of cheerleading. As crazy as that sounds, cheer pushed me outside my comfort zone in a way school classes never could. My introverted self was perfectly comfortable yelling as loud as my voice box would allow in front of what could have been my entire hometown by the end of my cheer career. I had built some of the best friendships with people I had never spoken to before and gone up in lifts that I never ever thought would be possible. So if there's a part of a dance you think you'll never be able to do or your bases are pushing you to try something you're scared of doing, try it.

A uniform doesn't make anyone any cooler.

I promise you it really doesn't. Remember the uniform that everyone is wearing, both cheer skirts and basketball jerseys, have time limits on them. Stay true to you and know that your uniform and poms don't have requirements, whether it be who you are or who you choose to spend your time with.

Value every moment.

Someday you're going to be sitting in the bleachers during the school song. Someday you won't get to spend the hours before a game teasing each others hair or taking hundreds of pictures. Someday you will go months without seeing the girls you see every day. It may feel like it's a million years away, but pretty soon that cheer uniform won't be yours either. And though what follows high school cheerleading can be pretty great, there's something so unique about the experiences you're having right now. So value each practice, each game, each tear, each smile, and each moment.