I went to high school at a tiny seventh-twelfth grade school in the Southern Tier of New York State. With 96 students in my graduating class, we got pretty close over the course of the four years I was there.

High school is an interesting testing ground for relationships. As teenagers, we kind of know we don’t know everything. We also think we know enough, and more than most of those around us.

Self-knowledge is tough because with all the new hormones, we’re still getting to know the person we’re becoming.

I had some memorable friendships in high school. One was a frenemy, if you can have a guy friend who’s a frenemy. We were often at odds, always fighting like siblings, and we drove each other crazy.

Even then, we both realized the reason we rubbed each other the wrong way so often was that we were very alike, and we saw in the other person things we hated about ourselves.

Although we didn’t admit this to each other, I’m fairly certain now that we both struggled with self esteem. I know I did.

Our identity as Not From Around Here was very important to us. His family had moved to our area from elsewhere in the state, and he had a strong regional accent, despite having lived in our area since he was a little kid. (We had another kid in our class who had moved from the same area around the time my friend had, and he didn’t have an accent – but he also clung to the identity of having come from Somewhere Else. NO ONE wanted to be from our neck of the woods if they didn’t have to be).

At the same time I may have privately scoffed a little at my friend’s accent, I clung to my identity as a West Coast girl even though I’d moved to the town I grew up when I was four and had few meaningful memories of having lived in the Northwest. Not only that, while I was born in Oregon, both my parents are from Pennsylvania, and so my accent is a blend of Upstate New York and Central Pennsylvania. (People used to make fun of me when I said, “Come aw-un!” with the “on” as a two-syllable word). The only claim I could make as an Oregonian is that I knew how to pronounce Oregon properly.

As my friend and I grew up together, our respect for one another grew. We knew how hard it was to be us, and by extension, the other person. We wanted to feel like we belonged, while still being  unique.

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When I was an upperclassman, my former ninth grade Earth Science teacher’s long- term partner died. She didn’t talk about it at school. I’m not even sure how I found out, but I remember reading her partner’s obituary in the paper.  That year she lost a lot of weight and looked miserable. It was clear she was grieving deeply.

I spent my childhood thinking science wasn’t my strong suit. Ninth grade Earth Science told me that was true. Where I had rarely worked before for high grades, I regularly got 80’s in that class, to my endless chagrin. But my teacher was amazing, and passionate about her job, and despite being disappointed in myself over my grades, I learned so much in that class. I had tremendous respect for my teacher because she was good at what she did, and she dared to be different.

Every Valentine’s Day at my school, we could buy roses for other students or teachers. You paid for them ahead of time and could choose if you wanted to be anonymous. I never got any roses, and took to wearing black on Valentine’s Day in protest.

Valentine’s Day that year, my Earth Science teacher got an anonymous rose. I didn’t know her well enough to comfort her in any obvious way, but I wanted her to know in that tiny school full of people who wanted to be different from one another but judged anyone who actually dared to do it, that someone had seen her.

She left a thank you note posted on the outside of her door to the anonymous giver.

That year, I got a rose for the first time. It was from my frenemy. Looking back now, as I’m doing all this personal work to find what my worth and identity really mean, that gesture seems as much one of self acceptance as it was acceptance of me.

My friend and I have basically lost touch. He’s not very active on my chosen Social fix, Insta. Without Facebook in my life, my former classmates are free to live their lives away from my curiosity. When I tried to look up my former teacher, I only found a flyer online for a group she was part of along with a couple other former teachers of mine.

I doubt either my friend or my teacher know the full significance of the roses to me, or the meaning they each brought to that time in my life. Maybe someday they’ll come across this little corner of the internet and completely disagree with both my retelling of the events, and my characterizations.

But I know that even if I was too underdeveloped to fully appreciate it at the time, they each taught me something important about the potency of real acceptance of both ourselves and others.

The image above is from my senior yearbook. The names have been smeared to protect the innocent. If I did the math right, this Valentine’s is the 20-year anniversary of this story.