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We all know the little red string on our finger, we all see it, we all know what it means and we don’t question it. Unless, you’re me. It’s common to have one string tied to your ring finger on your dominant hand, I don’t have one though. I have two, one on each hand.
The strings lead far away, it leads out my door, down the road and over the hill until I can’t see it anymore. Sometimes the string cross or intertwine and sometimes the strings look like one. But most of the time the strings go separate ways. Some people try to follow these strings attached to their finger, I’m not one of those people. Because I can’t follow both strings, they’re split too far apart and when they are together it’s too far away.
When I was a kid I told my mom about the strings “James.” She said “You’re one of a kind. You’re special.” She took my hands in hers and held my hands together so the palms were touching “Those strings mean that someone who will love you very much is waiting out there and you get two people who will love you.” I remember telling her I didn’t need the strings though, I had her. She laughed and shook her head “The people at the end of these strings will love you even when I’m gone. Keep those strings strong and protected. They’ll do the same for you.”
When you find the person at the end of your string you will be able to see their string. My step-dad says he can see my moms. I asked him what hers looked like. He told me it was broken and retied in many places, she’d loved deeply and lost a lot. I asked what his looked like, he told me his was unbroken because until he’d met my mother he’d never had a string before.
I entered middle school with those two strings attached to my fingers and every day the strings began to go closer and closer to each other. Until there were days when the strings actually tied together and did become one. The strings also got closer and closer to me, until the day I decided to follow the strings. I left school during lunch, went out the back towards the gym and found them sitting behind the gym holding their hands up and staring at me. It was a boy and a girl, their hands were resting next to each other and a string attached them.
Noticing their hands tied together like that was when I noticed mine was tied to their other hands, the ones lifted and pointing at me. I remember introducing myself, James at the time. Jenny and Buck they replied. It was silent after that until they asked me to sit with them.
The strings represent who you’re destined to be with, who you’re supposed to love truly. But what is true love? Is it the true love of fairy tales with romance and happily ever afters? Or true love of a friendship that will last for the rest of our lives? Well I suppose it’s different for everybody but for Beck, Jenny and I. Well I think it’s a little bit of both.