Everyone tells me that high school relationships are overrated. That they’re never worth it and that you rarely ever find that “high school sweetheart”. I know that this is true. I know I shouldn’t waste my time crushing on boys when I could be focusing on more important things in life. It’s just hard for me.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been looking for my “true love”. I think it started in kindergarten with this boy Bryson I had a crush on. I brought him flowers to school and would always stare at him from across the lunch yard at recess. Then in second grade there was Alex. He was my first “bad boy”. He watched Beavis and Butthead, talked about getting into fights, and wore basketball jerseys to school everyday.
My first serious crush was in the fourth grade. I remember walking into class on the first day of school and I couldn’t find my name tag on a desk so I just sat at an empty one. My friend Sarah told me mine was right next to hers, so I walked on over and sat down. Sitting right in front of me was Cannon. He had long bright blonde hair that sat underneath a beanie hat. We just kinda smiled at each other and he introduced himself. I swear to you that we were still looking at each other when the bell rang and everyone else had looked up at the teacher.
My crush on Cannon lasted until the beginning of sixth grade. In sixth grade was when I met Dylan, Troy, and Matt. I’ve always found Matt pretty cute, but in sixth grade I wasn’t dealing with any serious crushes on anyone. In seventh grade I just had little crushes on some people here and there and at the end realized I had a huge crush on Troy.
The summer before eighth grade Troy and I had a huge fight and weren’t as close as we used to be. By the end of my eighth grade year, he had pretended to like me and tell me he thought I was beautiful and then proceed to laugh about it and break my heart in the process.
In ninth grade I met Shawn. I swore he was perfect. He liked Bon Jovi and Van Halen, but he also listened to Owl City and 3oh!3. He had an amazing voice and could play almost any instrument. The only problem was his conceited-ness. He always had to be the center of attention. In the end my little crush just wore off and I knew I shouldn’t try and be with this kid.
Last year I didn’t meet anyone new or have any crushes on people. I just had a really crappy year. That got in the way of me really focusing on anything other than how bad my life seemed.
The summer before this year, I found Matt’s number in my phone. I had just gotten texting back and thought I should text him. We tried hanging out but never got the chance to. I ran into him at the Del Mar fair, but we didn’t do anything other than laugh awkwardly and smile. After a while it seemed like he kept blowing me off on offers to hang out, so I stopped bothering him.
In the beginning of this year, I thought everything was going to be smooth sailing. I didn’t have any guys to worry about, I had great friends, my classes were going to be easy, etc. Then one day in September, I was sitting at lunch when I looked up and saw Matt walk by.
This year would have been so perfect if he hadn’t strolled back into my life like that. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything socially if he had just stayed at his little charter school for his senior year. The second I saw him, I knew this year was going to go much differently than I had planned.
Right when I saw him, of course, I thought it was fate. I have this stupid thing upstairs in my head where I believe everything happens for a reason and when I saw him walk by the day after I realized this would be the first year I didn’t try and get him to come to our school’s homecoming dance, I thought it was meant to be.
I started realizing that throughout all of the messed up guys I had believed to have fallen for over the years, I always went back to thinking about Matt. He was like my fallback guy. He almost seemed imaginary since he didn’t go to the same school as me and I never saw him anymore. So when he started going to the same school as me again and I started to see him everyday, it made things a lot more real than I wanted them to be.
I ended up confessing to him that I liked him over winter break. He said he kinda had a girlfriend so we decided to be just friends. I figured it would be better to have him as a friend than to not have him at all. [That sounds like I’m totally in love with this kid, I’m not. Just a serious crush, I promise.]
So last night at MORP when I saw him dancing up on some girl, it became even more real for me. I originally thought he was just being nice and making up the girlfriend thing so he didn’t have to tell me that he wasn’t interested. Then a few weeks ago we had been texting each other and we talked for a few hours. I started to get really confused. He was making fun of me in a joking way and actually seemed interested in talking to me. I had thought that if he had a girlfriend, he wouldn’t talk to other girls as much. I also thought that if he didn’t like me, that he wouldn’t try and make conversation with me.
When I saw him with the girl last night, it made me feel like total crap. I felt used in a way even though he never really flirted with me or came onto me. We just talked. I felt hurt as if he danced with her in front of me on purpose even though he probably didn’t even notice me.
It hit me that he’s not the same little seventh grader I met six years ago. He’s way different now. He told me that. He practically warned me to stop liking him.
I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling like I’m completely invisible to the opposite sex. I actually went for this guy this time instead of keeping everything bottled up like I usually do. I still didn’t get what I wanted.
I know high school relationships are overrated. I just want to be able to have a reason for this for myself. I want to make the right mistakes and not have to feel unwanted all of the time. I don’t care if I only date a guy for a month and we break up. I just want to be able to say that I had a high school relationship. I want to be able to say bad things about high school relationships and have my own experiences behind why I think that.
I just want a boy to notice me for once. God knows I notice every single guy who walks by me.