Valentine’s Day in 2008 was hard to forget. I remember the night before I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning cutting out paper hearts, outlining and writing phrases/lyrics/quotes on them. Some were clichés like, “Someone’s watching over you.” But I also remember writing Incubus’ and Ray Lamontagne’s lyrics on some of these paper hearts: “Even diamonds start out as coal”, “Don’t look for love in faces/places / it’s in you / that’s where you’ll find kindness.” A group of us waited till the school was pretty much empty the day before Valentine’s to stick about 700 of these hearts on all lockers.

No one knew we were behind this and we intended it to be that way. It was a lovely sight on Valentine’s when everyone got to their lockers. Reactions were priceless. I saw this one guy who took his paper heart and stuck it on his shirtpocket and left it on the whole day. I smiled to myself for the rest of the day.

A true story inspired me to do this. A girl testified of how this one note that an anonymous person left on her locker saved her life. It simply said, “Your life has meaning” and she planned to kill herself that day.

I struggled with self-condemnation and self-worth a lot then. But I managed to look past that that day and it was beautiful.