I have a crush on a boy. This is bad. The last time I lusted after a boy like this was in grade 11. The year, I personally believe (me, without any training in the field other than what I gleaned from dated high school books and fledgling Wikipedia articles,) my self-diagnosed depression began and thrived.
There was a boy.
He wasn’t really all that and then some, if you know what I mean. He wasn’t the bees knees, or all that and a bag of chips, he was simply average. He had his group of friends, and I had mine, they just seemed to cross paths occasionally. And by “occasionally,” I mean he dated every single one of the girls in my group, for various periods of time. Breaking up with one and taking the next one on a date a day later. He was, simply put, a serial dater. I can’t really tell you how things evolved. But I can explain how the crush developed, and how I forcibly broke my own heart so no one else could.
I think, maybe, that I let the idea of him into the inner chamber of my heart because, simple as it is, he spoke to me. Flashback:
I am in grade 11. I am 17 years old. I am the quiet freak in a gaggling group of girls. I am fat, seen by myself as worthless, ugly. My best friend, my Siamese cat Sasha, is ill and will soon die. I am depressed. I wear black t-shirts, of which I own countless numbers. My puffy hair is untamed and parted down the center of my head. I have yet to begin maintaining my brows, and I am fat, fat and ugly. A year later, one of those gaggling girls will corner me in the library and tell me not to be embarrassed if I’m gay, since I don’t giggle over boys like the others do. I will be too shocked at the assumed implication that I will not be able to tell her that the reason I don’t obsess over boys like the rest of them do is because I am convinced that my inherent ugliness and girth “gross boys out,” as it were, so I see obsessing over them as a waste of my time and effort.
I am in grade 11, and this average, Ontario farmboy talks to me. I slowly become stricken.
I try to ignore these feelings, try to convince myself that he, like most other boys, is a jerk. I watch him date through my friends faster than I can recognize the development of a crush. By friend 4, I begin to daydream. By friend 5, I’m trying to plan out, in my head, how the conversation will go when, not if, he asks me out. By friend 5, I’ve convinced myself that he was only dating them because he was too shy to ask me out first. That he was my knight in burnished armour.
I panic. I find myself watching friend number 5 with growing jealousy. I begin to imagine nightmare scenarios, where he dumps number 5 for me, or worse yet, we go out and friends 1 through 5 turn on me for it. So I break my heart. I find reasons to despise him, I find flaws in his character, in his person, and extrapolate on them until he is nothing but dirt in my eyes. I take all of those panic situations, those nightmares, and convince myself that they will, without a doubt, happen. I hate him.
But when he breaks up with friend 5, and begins to go out with some other girl from outside my group, I hurt.
I start to feel a hole being dug into my gut, under my ribs, just below the surface. It’s like hunger pangs I can’t satiate – it is all consuming. I had broken my own heart, out of fear. He had inadvertedly broken up with me, out of disinterest. I hurt, like hell.
I have a crush on a boy.
He is nothing spectacular. He is simply average. He has his group, and I mine. We just happen to cross paths occasionally. He is nothing special. He just talks to me.
He has some of the kindest eyes that I have ever seen.
I’m going to have to break my heart again, before it’s too late.
He roughly grabbed at the tiny fists beating his chest. His six foot plus frame dwarfed her five foot two frail and hurt, yet large and substantial body. She had been crying, taking out all of her withheld anger and frustration at the thin-obsessed world, at the men who failed to see her shimmering light, on his broad chest. Her hands secured in his, her face holding the mixed emotions of anger, hurt, sadness and surprise, he made a simple decision. Closing the inches between them in one swift motion, he captured her trembling lips in a kiss both filled with, and fueled by, a desperate need.
Her eyes, now the size if the moon, shone green as un-spilled tears threatened to betray her. She slowly lowered her lashes, succumbing to the tears, which cascaded down her blushing cheeks to flow along her jaw line. He released her hands to caress the nape of her neck, running the rough pad if his thumb just under her ear. She shivered and, hands still trembling, leaned into his form and his kiss. Resting her hands onto his firm chest, she felt his heartbeat, as he felt her pulse under her ear, both beating in a rapid and panicked unison.
It felt as though, clichéd as it was, the world had stopped. As though all the sounds around them had been muted by the pounding of their now entangled hearts, that all other people had vanished, leaving a world shrouded in a cloak of black and white tableau, leaving only the exploding colours behind their closed lids to remain. Her lips were on fire. Trapped in his, she could only taste salt and honey and she quickly found herself addicted to him. She had never felt so safe, secure, had never felt something so sure as his hard chest, his soft lips, and the growing fire within her.
He was lost, lost in the scent, the taste, the feel, everything that made up the woman resting against him. His knees nearly buckled with the surge of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. His fingers worried and wound themselves into her dark hair, feeling each strand glide against pads of index and ring. She was made of silk and lemon juice – soft, smooth, acidic, a deadly combination which formed a poison he was sure would consume him.
How had they been so blind to each other for so long?
A noise, the door latch hitching, announcing an intruder, forced them apart. Out of breath and confused, they caught each others' eyes, and for the briefest of moments, fell in love. They turned their bodies away from each other and became, once again, close acquaintances, left to count their misgivings and sift through the shattered remains of hearts left broken.
Her throat was closed off, she daren’t utter a sound.
His footsteps were far too loud, but carried on in a desperate bid for freedom.
Both silently told themselves to never fall for her eyes, or his warmth, ever again. Both terrified of what could have been. Terrified of what was now a lost moment.
"This is not courage. This is a girl with too much fist. Never enough soap. This is trying to hug the moon because he's the only one without hands." -- Jeanann Verlee
Inspiration: Visual...
"Be kind - for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle"
Inspiration: Textual...
"The Orphan Tales: In the Night Garden" -- Catherynne Valente
