My heart is beating so quickly in my chest at the mere idea of even writing this. Do I even dare? Do I dare tell a story that isn’t solely mine, will never be? Do I take the plunge and write about something that’s relevant to everyone, but honestly, that everyone’s tired of reading about?
Aw, fuck it. Here it goes.
When I first entered the brick building that was my high school for freshman orientation, in my clunky and unfashionable black old lady shoes and my short hair with blocky side-cut bangs, the last thing on my mind was that my life would be utterly changed that day. The sole chance of meeting him was a million to one, he or I could have been in any high school over any states in any country, and we both ended up there. I knew only a few people that would be in my class and clung to the idea that at least they would be here. The thought of walking into thirty two sets of eyes made my hands shake, and I tried to hide my chewed nails in the long sleeves of my blazer as I ascended the stairs into the faculty office.
They pointed me in the direction of the gym, and I hesitantly opened the big double doors, steeling myself for those looks and for that ungraceful walk I would most certainly have as I tripped my way across the floor and into the bleachers. When I opened them, carefully stepping inside as my heels clicked on the floor, I looked up and saw no one. No teenagers gracing the seats, not a single soul in the bleachers waiting for me.
Looking around curiously, I tiptoed my way to the bleachers, taking the mismatched stairs all the way to the top and sitting down. I remembered wondering why the hell they sent me in here: no one else was here… where was everyone? After about five minutes of waiting, I had my answer as a sound rumbled from below, heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs I had entered the building from. I hardly had time to brace myself, the single figure in the huge auditorium, for the thirty two freshman that barrelled in.
The boys came first, of course, already laughing as they had known each other before entering high school, and my eyes darted around for the comfort of my few friends that I had made prior to orientation. I spotted a friend, the only one I really knew, and thankfully, she sat down right next to me, carrying on like we had been friends for ages. God bless her soul. And, when I glanced up as she gestured to her other friends, it’s like my heart stopped for a full beat and then stuttered a bit, almost like it knew that in that moment, we were truly and wholly fucked.
That’s the first moment I had ever seen him: the boy who would become my first love. He was flanked by two other boys, both oddly tall and identical, also whom I had never seen before. I don’t know what about him caught my eye, couldn’t tell you anything about why he out of everyone seemed to call to me. I could only tell you that in that moment, I took one look at him and knew. I knew that I loved him.
I’m going to pause there a moment: I know what you’re thinking. You may even be screaming at me. “Kelsey!” you shout at me, “How could you possibly be telling me that you loved this complete stranger at first sight! That’s ridiculous!”
And I most certainly and completely agree, dear reader. I don’t know how I knew, or why, I just looked and him and…. Knew. I couldn’t tell you anything more than that, couldn’t describe it in a way that would make you understand. I just knew.
If you knew anything about who I am, you would also probably shout: “But Kelsey!” you scream, gesturing wildly with your hands at my entire being, “You’re such an old bag who hates the idea of love, and doesn’t believe that true love exists for you!”
Also true, dear reader. But it was not always so.
Thus began the story of he and I: I watched him, pined after him, you could say, and always from a distance. I was always very decisive, always ever had only one crush at a time. You could say that, while he was always my first choice, I was definitely not always his.
What follows next is a series of events: most of my unrequited love for him, and him not knowing that I even exist. Such is my life.
1. Our first homecoming dance: he didn’t have a date, but when arriving at the dance, asks out my friend. She accepted. She knew that I liked him. I didn’t get mad.
2. Sophomore year: he broke his arm, and began dating an upperclassman. She signed his cast “with love”. I was heartbroken.
3. I got his number. We texted, but on and off, never really talking about anything.
Then, my junior year of high school, when I had given up almost all hope, we began talking. Not, like, actually talking as in dating. More talking in the friendly, “I want to get to know you” way. I know Millennials and their various levels of “talking” is absolutely ridiculous.
We became close friends: I remember once, on Junior retreat, I was in a group without any of my friends and he gave up his own group to join mine. I still remember that day, feeling weightless and happy. You can imagine high school me swooning, if you’d like. We chatted about anything and everything: the first time he asked me to hang out, I was spastic and overjoyed, thinking of all the possibility that I assumed would clearly come from this. And, eventually, it did: he asked me to be his date to homecoming, and I accepted.
I will preface the following events with this, dear reader: I have always been very serious about my relationships, probably more than a seventeen year old should have been and a now twenty-two year old should be. I date for keeps, so to speak, and my heart was clearly set on him. I thought we were similar, in a way: life had cast us a horrid hand of cards, but we played them as best we could. Mine full of years of depression and self-loathing, his a set of hospital visits and trust issues.
After that, we began dating, if you could call high school romances such. For me, it felt like a real and tangible thing, like I had found a person I wanted to be with and he wanted to be with me. For him, I was never sure what it was: a passing fling that kept him entertained and busy, or more than that.
He made my days brighter, gave me something to look forward to and to live for. I hadn’t known it at the time, but I was struggling with depression, and I somehow wanted him to save me: something that I now look back on as one of the things that ended our relationship, and something I wholly unfairly burdened him with.
We began having problems: I wanted someone I could talk to, someone I could share everything with, someone who would be there for me, and that simply was not in his nature. He was sarcastic and happy-go-lucky, painting most things as a game. Which was also one of his strongest defense mechanisms: he would play everything off, never showing how he really felt about something.
I tried to talk to him about my worries: would corner him in the school stairwell and beg him to talk to me, would just sit there and tell him that this is what I was feeling and this was real to me. He always just nodded, said he would do better, and we would begin the cycle again. It would have been different if he just explained that it wasn’t in him to talk about or understand these things, but instead, it became a game of trying to keep me happy.
I became friends with that upperclassman ex of his, something else that lead to our eventual downfall. We met when I joined the bowling team to spend more time with him and my friends. At first, I hated her, distrusted her because I somehow knew she wasn’t good for me. Slowly, she gained my trust, feeding me lies and truths that I simply didn’t want to know: about him, about us, about their past relationship. I became distraught, and on top of the negative comments she continually fed me, I felt our relationship was dying. Always having the constant thought of him finding out how fucked up I was and leaving me, always listening to the poisonous words that she sowed in my heart.
Eventually, it was my decision. I remember the look on his face when I told him I didn’t think this was working, and the relief I felt when I drove home that night. Now, all I feel is regret. Regret that I somehow didn’t try hard enough, and regret that I trusted his ex. When I broke up with him, I looked to her for guidance and help: I was hurting, wanting to be with the person I loved but feeling like I couldn’t because he didn’t have what I needed, and she didn’t respond to my texts or calls. I remember seeing her in the school hallway, after she had graduated, and I asked where she was and why she wasn’t responding to me. She laughed and said she had to leave. I thought she was my best friend, but after we broke up, I never heard from her again.
After that, he and I were on and off, always teetering on the edge of getting back together and my mind whispered its “what ifs” and poisonous thoughts of how I was and who I was becoming, and I couldn’t make the commitment and get hurt again.
The third time we started talking again, after he had tried and failed to win me back, he told me that he loved me. I told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about.
That third time hit the hardest: it began with that phrase, and ended with me finding out that he was dating someone while he was whispering sweet nothings to me.
After that, I couldn’t trust him, had found it hard to trust anyone anymore after that.
The strange thing was, I kept on loving him. Had never told him of the fact, but kept on regardless. Even after graduation, I kept on silently wishing the outcome had been different, kept on hoping he would come back to me. A stupid thought, but a persistent one nonetheless.
I began talking to him again my sophomore year of college. I had gotten better in my poisonous thoughts and corrupted mind, and was filled with regret and sorrow. I wanted him, I had always wanted him, but thought he would cast me aside. My best friend had to send out the friend request and the first hello.
I was ecstatic again, filled with hope and a sense that this was where we were meant to be. I had always thought I belonged with him, no matter how fucked up or irrational the thought was. I thought we were going well, and had high hopes for a friendship with him.
He stopped talking to me a month later.
I messaged him once again the summer before my senior year. I was still plagued by the thought of him, would have given anything for the thoughts and the haunting feelings to go away. I messaged him out of desperation, hoping to get some form of closure or clarity.
Instead, I got a single reply from him: it’s water under the bridge. I don’t want to talk about it.
I promised when I graduated high school that I would never cry over him again. I cried that day.
Nothing is worse than knowing that the person you loved, love, couldn’t care less about you.
And that, dear reader, is the end of the story: well, at least this particular story. I know you’re finishing this and thinking to yourself that there wasn’t many specific memories or stories about us during our relationship, and to that, I will say: it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he made me laugh, or what the color of his eyes were, or that my stomach was a mass of nerves the first time he held my hand. Those are memories that I keep close to my heart, and in the long run, don’t matter to this story. Fill in what you will: try to picture what we were, what we are, who we are.
That’s all that is said about my first and perhaps last love. I keep the memories and emotions tied with him in a little chest inside my head, locked up tight and only unlocked during those sad nights when I can’t keep them there, where I take them out, look at them, and put them gently back.
Not all stories of love are good stories: no one wants to hear about the heart you gave that never got shattered and was kept in good care and high regard. It just so happens that sometimes we give our hearts to the wrong people, and even though we know we shouldn’t we let them keep it anyway.
A piece of me will always be his. I don’t want it back: I gave it to him freely, and even if he threw it out a long time ago, at least I knew he cared about it at one point.