I'm going to tell you about my first crush.*
Guys. Stop giggling. This is, like, serious.
I'm not sure I should even post this on here because it's a tiny bit personal and embarrassing but people have done more embarrassing things on the internet in the past, so why not.
I didn't develop my first real crush on a boy until the beginning of junior year, when I was 16, almost a year ago. (So I'm a 17 year old eighth grader, let's move on.)
This is the sort of secret that causes people to freak out a little bit, wondering what's wrong with you and if you are secretly asexual or developmentally challenged or something, which is not the case. I've liked boys for a while, I just would look around at the ones I knew and imagine kissing them and getting really grossed out, not by the act of kissing, but at thought of kissing them individually. It's not that they're all really disgusting people or anything, it's just... you don't like kissing people you don't want to kiss, you know? Picture Cher from "Clueless:" "Searching for a boy in high school is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie."
I suppose this comes across as weird because a lot of my friends seem a little incomplete if they don't have a guy to obsess over. It's not like they are a bunch of clingy weirdos who revolve their whole lives around boys, but it's like a hobby, a small distraction from school. I don't feel the need to do that. Maybe it's because I tend rather to look for deeper relationships. It's not like I want to marry the boy I like; I don't stray to the other end of the scale where I need a promise of eternal commitment to go out with someone. But I figure, if your first date is virtually guaranteed to be awkward, it might as well be with someone you actually like not just in a romantic way because they're cute but also as a person. Otherwise it hardly seems worth it, other than for the sake of a funny story.
Let's backtrack a little to my first, shall we call it, fake crush.
So when I was in third grade. Gangly kid, new glasses, on the brink of ceasing to be cute. I guess it was around the time when a lot of girls start getting the idea that they should have a boyfriend because I started getting a little worried that I didn't like any boy like that. So I looked around the classroom and decided that if I had to like a boy then Mike** would be the best candidate. I didn't know him very well, but he wore glasses, and in my limited experience with him wasn't too obnoxious. So poor, unsuspecting Mike became my first pseudo-crush.
I don't think he deserves much sympathy for this because as far as I can remember I didn't do anything about it. I was fairly shy back then. I think it was just so I could have a fallback option if the topic ever came up in conversation, which I don't remember it doing.
You see how serious this crush business is.
Let's go back a year further to second grade.
This was at the peak of the girl-boy wars during recess. Did you ever play them? If not, let me explain. Basically, all the second grade boys declare war on all the second grade girls. There's not much of a point to this game. Essentially it involves chasing each other around and guarding your own territory and occasionally being told off by the recess patrol when they realize that you are not just playing a friendly game of tag.
Well, I was informed by a few friends and random other second graders that a certain boy liked me.*** I still don't know if this was actually true, but it seems to have been confirmed by a few people over the years, and at any rate the accuracy of the statement is somewhat irrelevant. This drove me to stay inside during recess helping out around the classroom for at least a week, like the cowardly human I have been since birth, until at long last some girl pestered me into going outside and talking to him.
We crossed over into the boys' territory after being harassed by some of his friends until I met up with him. I can't remember what happened exactly. I know it was uneventful. We just sort of looked at each other and then I left.
Mark one down for failed normal human interaction.
Let's fast forward to about seven months ago. Keep in mind that I am still a lameass today. Basically, this guy I know kind of sort of asked me out (I know that if any of my friends from off the internet are reading this they're probably going to be angry at me for not telling them right about now, but, calm down, people, let me finish). Which was okay. Except then he texted me twice and I just ignored them. I mean, didn't even open the text messages because I didn't want to look ignored. Which is not a good strategy for dealing with people and is also quite a bitchy thing to do, although I wasn't trying to be bitchy, I was just... bad at dealing with things. Anyway it's come to the point where I still feel really bad about but I feel like too much time has gone by for me to apologize without making it more awkward, so on the off chance that he is reading this, I'm really sorry and talk to me about it sometime because I'm fine with talking about it in person, I just don't want to be the one to bring it up. Thanks.
What I am trying to say by all this, other than that I have never been quite normal, is that I am somewhat of an awkward, curl-up-in-my-shell-rather-than-deal-with-the-world sort of person sometimes, which is certainly a rather large flaw of mine, but doesn't make me a lunatic. And I also would like to say that have you tried being a teenage girl who doesn't have a crush on a boy? Because your friends will never believe that you don't to the point where you may feel driven to make one up so they'll stop distrusting you. So the fact that I actually like somebody for an extended period of time is sort of monumental for me. Of course I haven't done anything about it (other than the surface fear of rejection we all experience, it's sort of a long, depressing story why) but I will. I will.
I mean, that's what I say now.
*I'm not going to name any names because the internet can sometimes be smaller than we think and circuitously lead certain mentioned people to this blog and that would be awkward for me.
**I'm just going to go ahead and use his real name here despite my previous statement about not naming any names because it's a common name and on the off chance he reads this (I still know him today, albeit very casually) : Hey Mike, how's it going? I would like to assure you that I don't still "like" like you today. I think you're a cool person and all but I was eight at the time and probably more awkward than I am now, so please don't think that I am at this very moment plotting to jump your bones. Thanks! Hope you're having a nice summer!
***We're not going to use his real name because I still know him today too, and, well, let's just say that while I haven't talked to him in probably two years, if I did, we wouldn't exactly be the best of friends.
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