frontofmymind

[frontofmymind]

#5

When I was a kid, I had a fear of thunderstorms. Thunder would freak me out, lightning would fend me off from closing my blinds because I didn’t want to get too close. I liked rain, but when it came down hard enough to make noise I was uncomfortable. It was until I was in middle school, being an angsty teenager that I got over that fear. I was 13 at the time, it was a year after my parents had gotten divorced. I discovered depression at that time. My family was torn apart, my old friends from elementary school drifted away, I felt truly alone. It was a weekend at my dad’s house, he was drunkenly sleeping and I decided I needed fresh air. In the middle of a thunderstorm, mind you. My anger, sadness, and general overactive hormones mixed and made me suddenly forget my fear. I stumbled out of the garage in shorts and an old jacket that was in my dad’s closet; I had never seen him wear it at that point in my life, and that remains true to this day. The rain quickly drenched my uncovered head, but I kept going. I was only a few houses down the street when lightning struck a light pole next to the sidewalk. The electricity spread through the pole, scorching the grass at the bottom and narrowly reaching me. The jolt was quick, the pain was strong, and I, I was on the ground. To this day, I still hardly understand how the hell that electricity spread just far enough to reach me, but here we are. I eventually picked myself up and walked home. I no longer feared storms after that day.

For years after that, I assumed I had no fears. There was nothing I felt enough fear to avoid. If I could survive getting (indirectly) struck by lightning, I could muster up the courage to do basically anything that came up.

Honestly, the few things that I was hesitant about at first, I was strong enough mentally to force myself to try.

When I was in first grade, my oldest brother got a skateboard. I always remembered it seemed so out of place because the design was clearly old-school compared to boards at the time. Nonetheless, whenever he was at wrestling practice and I didn’t have any sports for the day I would always try to ride it.

I would put a foot on the board, and immediately get scared. It was a strange thing to balance on and I felt uncomfortable the moment my other foot left the ground to force a push. Every day that I took a few moments to try riding it, I would inevitably find myself rolling down the driveway on my stomach, using all four limbs to push.

Once I reached college, a lot of friends I made were into longboarding. It fascinated me, and honestly, I needed a faster way around campus. A friend my freshman year promised to help teach me, but it wasn’t until my sixth semester that I bought a board and just taught myself.

The board cost $20, from a person I had many classes with at that point. I bought the board and a ten-minute walk later, I had set it down and sat still, staring down a long hallway. I stood this way for a few minutes until I finally lifted that second foot and just pushed.

Now, I’ve skied since middle school, and got up to the ninth (blue belt for those curious) of fourteen ranks in my respective martial arts school; it took time but I learned proper balance, I know how to catch myself on ridiculous falls, and perform stupid feats that most people think is only in movies.

Even so, that first push, and the first few dozen after, were uncomfortable, even on carpet. Some of the friends that boarded saw me and within an hour there was eight of us rolling back and forth in this stretch of hallway while I was learning, a wonderful group trying to support me in a less direct way than holding me to act as training wheels.

By the end of the day I was outside. The second day I was taking light hills. Within a week I going down hills that most of them waiting months to tackle. That was the first time I fell and injured myself as well.

I remember taking a steeper, curved hill for the first time to get to a shift at work. I was confident for the first few seconds, but when I realized this would be the fastest turn I’d have taken up to that point, I panicked. I ditched my board last second and rolled myself into the grass, scraping up my hands and knees, but I was okay.

I stayed in the grass a few moments since no one was alone. The sky was a beautiful blue that late spring day. It was that crash where I finally stopped and just thought to myself how proud the kid me would be, that I finally braved the challenge of a skateboard.

With a little time, and sometimes a mental kick-in-the-butt, every fear can be conquered. 

Nowadays though, I’ve realized I do have a fear or two that creeps up from time to time. I’d say the biggest one is failure.

I had several tough years where I genuinely disliked my family for a lot of things they did to me, choices they made on their own that I just took offense to because it had some unintended effect on me. By the time I graduated, I realized that I didn’t want to let them down.

The friends I had made during those tough years were the ones that kept me going, pushed me to keep moving forward when I just wanted to stop and sit down forever.

My parents supported me throughout my years, they encouraged me to be who I wanted to be and do what I wanted to as long as it made me happy.

Over time, that love I was shown by those around me became something I relied on so desperately, and I never realized it until I took a moment to reflect when I was struggling, right now.

I’m stressed beyond belief right now, it’s the toughest semester I’ve ever had and of course, it’s my last. On a long drive back to campus from a weekend at home, I broke down. Sometimes, all the big and little things just build up so much that, even while you’re still holding them up, it feels like the weight of the world is just crushing you.

But the things I fear now, are the things that drive me.

That feeling of being crushed, is the itching, nagging feeling that I may fail. But I won’t.

Because I don’t want to fail the people who have gotten me this far. I don’t want to let all the time they put into me go to waste. I want to take that diploma, the one I never wanted but agreed to work for, and see my family and friends smile; I want to make them happy, because that makes me happy.

It’s interesting how, over time, perspectives change so much. The things that I dislike or fear no longer deter me like when I was kid. I choose to let them motivate me instead, I choose to be stronger than I was because that’s how I should be, how I can be.

The kid in me fears those thunderstorms, the loud booms and cracks, the bright flashes. But that kid in me is also fascinated by them. As much as he fears them, he leaves the blinds open because the flashes are wondrous and he wants to see more.

I’ll make my friends and family proud, and I’ll make the kid in me proud too. Nothing will stop me forever.

Written to the tune of: twenty one pilots: Can't Help Falling In Love (Cover)

[frontofmymind]

#4

Been awhile everyone. Got super busy, super lazy, super unmotivated to write about ideas I had, but here I am. Been tossing the idea to write about this around for many months now, and have well over 20 pages of drafts of this in poetry and regular story format. Not quite happy with it still, but I think it’s in a decent place at least. If I end up rewriting a better version of it at some point maybe I’ll make a ‘4.01′ or ‘4 v2′. Or maybe I’ll just edit this original post. Unsure, we’ll see.

It’s strange what can jog your memory sometimes.

I was at a wake for a childhood friend today, standing outside with the departed’s brother, exchanging idle conversation while he smoked a cigarette to relax. Tensions were high for everyone of course, it was such an unfortunate passing due to an overdose, but even just being around the cigarette helped bring me down a bit.

The first 12 years of my life were in a house filled with the scent of those little cancer sticks. I lived in that smoke, and it lived in me. To this day, I’m unsure why my dad picked up the habit, be it peer pressure, to look cool, or some sort of stress from that time, but he’s continued it to this day.

I can still remember sitting in the middle seat of the back of the car whenever our family went somewhere. I had two older brothers, so I was obligated to be in the middle as the youngest, but I never minded. I would always watch my parents interact in the front while we drove, how they would watch the road, look at other cars, glance at each other or us kids in the back on occasion.

I specifically remember how my dad would smoke in the car. He always held the cigarette between his middle and pointer fingers, like most people. It would get taken down to the ashtray in the cupholders, gripped between the thumb and pointer at that point, and then get tapped exactly twice by his middle finger before returning to his mouth. I suppose he was such a smoking veteran at that point that two taps were truly all he needed before he could return to his easiest hobby.

Our house smelt of cigarettes at all times. The bathrooms, the garage, the basement, everywhere. I would go to school and always wonder why the classrooms or hallways didn’t smell like my house, like fresh air wasn’t how it was supposed to be. But the smell of smoke was my normal, it was all I really knew.

Regardless, the clean smelling environment made it super easy to pick up on teachers who would smoke outside of work, or classmates who came from households with smokers.

My oldest brother was a wrestler in high school, and through that we met another family with a kid that matched each of the ages of my siblings and I. Around the time I was nine years old, our families started going camping together. We had seasonal passes, so we left our big ol’ campers at the campground most of the year and spent most weekends there.

Our campers were directly next to one another, so we would arrive Friday evenings, get settled into our second homes, then have a campfire at night. Besides the fact that the s’mores I got to have near every Friday were the highlight of my young life at that point, those weekends were also the earliest times I can ever remember a smell overpowering the cigarette smoke I had dealt with for so long: campfire smoke.

To this day, I’m still dumbfounded by the fact that two different substances producing smoke can produce a smell so different, but here we are.

Besides the taste of s’mores every weekend, I loved the smell of the campfire. The way the wood burned was my favorite thing to watch as everyone older around me talked and laughed. The way my clothes would stay smelling like that for days if they weren’t washed before being worn again, using flashlights with the smoke to simulate low-budget lightsaber battles, just being around friends and family; smoke suddenly had a second impact on me.

To this day, the smell of a grill or campfire reaching my nose immediately grabs my attention. My mind races with memories of those days, and I will actively search out where the smell is coming from.

I don’t see my dad often these days, he works third shift, and I’m almost always at college an hour away from home. When I do get to see him though, we typically go out to eat or work on a small project that ends up taking forever to complete because it’s just so hard to get together. Every time I do see him though, he always drives.

The moment I open the door to his vehicle I get a blast of that familiar scent of cigarette. The way it relaxes me almost makes me kind of understand how people can smoke cigarettes to relax, despite knowing how it kills them with each breath.

The scent of smoke is my most loved and hated smell in the world. I know what it does, I’ve seen what it does to too many of my family and friends, and yet it’s my childhood, there at my highest and lowest points when I was young, one of the easiest ways I can think of my dad or my childhood home or those fond days of camping.

At this point in my life, I could never see myself picking one up, but stumbling upon the scent drifting through the air from time to time just makes me feel like everything will be alright.

Written to the tune of: Sad Beats - Spotify Playlist

[frontofmymind]

#3

So I took a few days off. A weekend honestly. It was nice. A big part of that problem was already not really knowing what to write about. I’ve had a general request for topics from friends for about a week now and literally no one has given any. I started coming up with a list of my own, just things I randomly thought about in a day that I could potentially expand on or stories I could think to tell, but, while they were decent in the moment of writing the idea down, none really spoke to me when I was sitting down, hoping to write something out. I don’t often just sit and essentially journal like I’ve been trying to with this Tumblr. In fact, I tried it only once before, back in middle school, and I’m pretty sure I wrote about a (different) crush like once, and that was one of the only three times I used that journal. It’s just not my thing, I prefer writing fancy stories, but the ones I wanna write are better in visual form, so here we are, not posting them. Did I mention a professor of mine destroyed my grade on a paper due to run-on sentences in a paper he specifically said to make ‘personalized’? I wanted to argue that I tend to make big, janky sentences with stupid amounts of comments when I’m thinking and thinking as I speak/write, but decided it wasn’t worth the argument. Clearly not salty. So yeah, fun weekend of having no idea what to write. Today was actually the damn same which upset me. Went home for the weekend and relaxed. Played some Dark Souls Remastered every night until stupid hours, pet a dog (a ton), pet my turtle (much less because he doesn’t like being touched much), a lot of shopping. Today we ended up having an early dinner on our back patio for the first time in uh, ever. Had to replace the screen door because the dog literally ran through it when my uncle showed up for the weekend (it’s my uncle’s dog, we’ve been watching him). So we were out there, failing to put the new one in, decided to clean the patio doors, then the table that’s been out there untouched for years, and that lead to having a pleasant dinner where I stupidly sat in direct sunlight and regretted it quickly. Food was dope though. Then we got up to put the dishes in the sink, and that first step inside the house, oh my god. Like I mentioned, we’ve basically never touched that little table since moving into this place and I can’t recall a time before then that we used it either. But more than that, since our only ‘backyard’ is literally the patio, I never use it. If I’m outside it’s with friends, exiting/entering the car between stores, or walking between classes at this point. But it’s rare I’m just outside to just enjoy the world around me in a calm atmosphere, so this was a nice change. But back to that first step inside. Oh my god. The blast of comfortable A/C upon reentering the house, the familiar scent of the home, just, wow. I haven’t felt that simple bliss since I was a kid going back inside after taking a dip in the pool at our first (technically second but I don’t remember the first one at all so it’s the first to me OKAY) family home. I always remember getting out, grabbing my Spider-Man towel to dry off in and climbing to the top of the deck where I’d proceed to try rubbing myself as dry as possible. When I wasn’t nearly dry enough I’d wrap myself up in the towel and just sit on the patio chairs, looking into the neighboring yards and talking with my family or friends. Then, when I was dry enough, I’d finally open the patio door to that similar sliding noise I can hear in my mind but can’t think of a way to properly write out, and that same bliss of the A/C and the scent of the house was one of my favorite things ever. I haven’t felt that in so close to a decade (8-ish years) now that I entirely forgot how much I used to enjoy those days. It was always the best during the summer when I didn’t have a sports game that day or it was early enough that we could get back and just relax in the pool for the rest of the day. My brothers were always faster than me to get ready but I was the only one comfortable with diving into the cold water when the pool cover didn’t warm it up enough, so I was always the first one in. My parents would join us sometimes, but usually they just sat on the deck and watched or adulted. I remember all the little toys that we had specifically for the pool, from the foam balls we would throw as hard as possible at one another in a strange form of dodgeball, the hard plastic torpedoes we would also throw at each other as hard as possible under water, or even the random toys from the basement that we eventually got tired of and took outside to the pool for more things to dive for, even if those ultimately turned into ammunition for us to throw at each other as well. No idea why everything turned into a game of ‘don’t get hit, idiot’ with us, but it was still a great time. My parents used to throw a summer party every year at that house. I never really knew why they did it, I’ve never even thought to ask if they had a reason other than just getting people together, but those were some awesome times. So many people would come over, their coworkers, old friends, family I didn’t see as much as I liked to back then. So much delicious food, so much time in the pool or playing video games in the basement, an entire day of fun, morning to midnight. I remember the one year that we were still in the pool as it was getting super late. The sun had basically set at this point, the sleepy blue of night had started taking hold of the sky, and my dad comes down from the deck and walks to this wooden pole we always had next to the pool. I was probably about 7 or 8 at this point, and not once had I seen someone walk near this pole. But my dad, my damn dad. He walks up, beer in hand, and just flicks a switch. Bright, beautiful light suddenly gave the pool a new life. My little mind was blown. I had looked at that pole hundreds, probably thousands of times, seen the lights on top, but not once did I ever realize it was a damn light for the pool at night. I genuinely question how I was top of my class for most of my life, especially that young, because I’m really stupid a lot of the time. The rest of that night was just wild, it was an intense few hours of just splashing around and throwing toys at each other with friends there to join. There was another year, another summer party we threw, that the neighbor directly behind us had SWAT surrounding their house for some reason? Basically everyone who had came left by that point in the night, but one family, basically our best friends, had stayed. I remember we were in the basement playing on the Gamecube at that time. The youngest son, one of my two best friends at that point, wanted to spend the night, so we ran upstairs to ask. When we got out on the deck we were immediately shushed. They pointed to the backyard of that house and, very faintly, I could see a few figures just crawling through the grass, some on the sides too. It was such a strange occurrence, I still don’t know why it happened, what ended up happening, or why they didn’t force us to go inside rather than gawk at them, but it was quite the night. So many memories from back then. I don’t really think about them at all, most are basically forgotten to time until something random wakes up them, like walking through the patio doors today. Weird triggers like that are good to have though, I would like them a lot more often honestly. Figured this would be longer, but I’m at the end of this rope for now. I figure if there’s certain posts that could have follow-ups or something so closely related that they could be put together, I’ll just end up titling them ‘#X.X’ to help with a guide of sorts. Need to also work on just building an index of the different stories for easier navigation someday. There’s so few posts right now that it hardly matters, but some day it might. Maybe I’ll write about my brothers next post? Not sure what in particular I’d want to say, but it’s an idea for the future if nothing else. Maybe maybe. I’m gonna go lay down now, fail to sleep for a few hours like usual, get up way too early for class, the usual. Thanks for reading. Written to the tune of: c0nvexity & EXZAUST - Cosmic Kittens

[frontofmymind]

#2

As a kid, I used to always want super powers. Most kids did, yeah. But this was like, my obsession. Every birthday I asked my parents for powers. Every Christmas I asked Santa for powers. At one point, my parents even took me to a ‘Breakfast with Santa’ at some fancy event place. We had breakfast, then I got in line to go talk to Santa. I sat on his lap and he said, “Hello there Chris,” leaning close in and whispering. “I hear you want powers for Christmas?” My damn mind was blown. I eagerly told him yes, he asked me why, I told him that I really wanted to be something more, to do something more, to be strong, more simple reasons. He eventually told me to be extra good to my parents and he’ll see what he could do, but powers are no easy gift, and it would take a lot to give that to anyone. Believe it or not, Santa never gave me powers for Christmas. Disappointing, I know. But it never stopped me from still wanting them, or thinking up new ones, or playing superheroes with friends. Now, I like to consider myself a writer. And no, that’s not just because I can spend 45 minutes writing a 2,100 word essay on my longest lasting crush at 2:30 in the morning. I like stories, and I have a bunch swimming about in my head at any given time. 

How does this connect? Well, let’s keep going from when I was a kid. Throughout elementary school, starting in 1st grade through 5th, I had an expanding group of friends during recess. I explicitly remember that the coolest guy on the playground was always the fastest, and every single day all the boys would gather up on the concrete and start racing each other for fun and to be the fastest and the coolest. Those were good times. Once we were done with that, we would usually migrate to the actual playground right next to the blacktop and play on the swings, the monkey bars, (starting in 3rd grade) the basic rock climbing wall in the back, or even the giant metal ladder that existed for some reason. But that started to get old, quick. You can burn energy on that all day, sure, but it’s not exactly exciting forever. By this point I was of course obsessed with heroes and getting super powers, and at home I liked to imagine myself as a superhero who would fight off evil creatures that were trying to attack my school and friends. So one day, while I was talking about cool powers with my best friend at the time, we decided we were gonna play with powers for recess. At that time, my playground power was control over water. My friend’s ability is unfortunately lost to time, neither of us quite remember. I actually wrote a story about two to three months ago that was heavily inspired by our playground antics and asked him if he remembered then. We mutually decided to fill in his power as being control over magnetic forces. We played like that for a couple days and other kids started catching on, joining in, it was a blast. Every new kid who wanted to join would come ask us and we would think of a cool power for them as a group, then fill them in however they wanted. Eventually we had us two, a kid with control over acid, one with fire, one with lightning, another with blue lightning because it’s completely different, and tons more. At some point Ben 10 came out, and I remember for a short time we shifted our focus to playing like we had our own Omnitrix’s. We took the time to draw out full aliens on paper, making a small Pokedex of our own creations to transform into. At another point a bunch of us in class started drawing comics and sharing them with each other in the middle of class. A new volume from someone everyday, guaranteed. Mine was about MAGI THE MAGICIAN (pronounced Maa - ji, not Maggie) and his fantastic powers granted to him by a wand he stumbled upon one day. Oh, and the wand gave him a cape, important details. Magi’s first enemy, BIO BOY, became an ally, and the two fought evil together for a few volumes before I made a fighting team out of them and other enemies. It was great fun. That entire time we would play as a group at recess it was giving me ideas for a big, jangled narrative I had with my hero persona at home. By the end of 1st grade I had decided to give him control of wind, fire, water, earth, lightning, and a specialty of his own, crystals, among other things. Interestingly enough, Avatar came out the next year, and that threw me for a loop because as a kid I thought the creators had read my mind on having a character who could control that many elements. There was a specific cast of villains that would come back from time to time, he started using a staff for a weapon that grew in strength as he did, my best friend became a major character in this story with his own powers, cool stuff. So, judging off 1st grade being 14-ish years ago, I’ve been actively working on this character, and this narrative for a wild 14 years. Even into middle school I couldn’t let go of this version of myself, the adventures he had taken and was continuing to take, the friends and enemies he encountered, the world he saw that I never could. By 4th grade more of a story actually started to form rather than random one-off’s of the character fighting something and moving on. In middle school that went further, got more proper. In about 7th or 8th grade, I rebooted the entire world. I decided that it was still too jumbled up from when I was a kid, and while I could, and had, started making an actual narrative to it, a fresh start would be better. Now, it’s worth noting that this reboot originally occurred more because I was trying to distance myself from continuing to imagine this. I felt it was too childish, I was too depressed with life and avoiding a lot of things, stupid reasons. It wasn’t long before I returned to it and started with it again. And oh boy, was it a damn slow start. I remember the start of this reboot took me like 2 months before I actually got past an intro in my head. Every night I would lay down, quickly get restless, and start imagining this world, as I had done for so many years at that point. And every night I would start in the same spot, building this introduction to the new version of this story bit by bit, getting unhappy or bored with it and stopping. The next night I would go again. I started writing a basic version of it down in 8th grade, when I realized this entire concept, as an actual story for others to read, wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea. I was heavily inspired by reading books at the time like the Percy Jackson series, the Hunger Games series (which I managed to finish entirely a week before they announced the first movie), and the Maze Runner series (with the 3rd book being published in my freshman year of high school). I still find it interesting how all of those have become movies now. I refuse to watch any of them. But yeah, even to this day, I still continue that same story, it’s still on-going, in my head and in my notes. The stories are still played out in my head as much for my own entertainment and wonder as they are for an actual story I want to tell someday. The main character is still very much based on me, and it took me many years of being uncomfortable with him still sharing my name before I ended up changing it to another name I used for awhile online. Honestly, I’m still not entirely comfortable with it because that name was picked for another reason and I literally go by it for some people still, aka it’s still literally me, but I’m still not quite sure what to change it to. An on-going struggle. But since then, I’ve shifted focus to literally dozens of other stories. Some are series of their own, some are (currently) one-offs, and a couple actually connect to the reboot world of the story I’ve been talking about this entire time. I debated a college degree for awhile, what would be worth going for. I wanted it to be writing, but ultimately decided that a degree in writing wouldn’t get me any further than just writing on my own. Even then, I picked it up as a minor in my 2nd year to help guide me in picking extra classes and give me a proper excuse to write. And in that time I’ve realized that not all stories have to be told as books. With the crazy amount of anime-like combat that occurs in basically every story I come up with, describing all the detail to make it engaging and coherent is relatively difficult, and in fact drags on quite often. I’ve been thinking in the last few years that maybe these stories would be better in a more visual manner, like comics, animation, or movies. You can still write for those, it’s just another way of presenting the writing. That’s the goal currently though, to truly make something out of those stories that does them justice. I’m more hoping for a comic or an animation, but I have no skill in drawing or animating or any of that realm, so I just have to do a great job with writing the stories to make them worth making more out of in other people’s eyes. So, what was all this rambling about? Well, besides the fact that it helped me realize that I’ve been a ridiculously restless person at night, even since childhood, it was a way for me to properly express a thought that creeped up in my mind recently, that I may just be writing some of these stories to try appeasing the child still in me, to kind of bring that kid peace in my mind. It may seem crazy, and honestly it is, but it’s a reasoning that feels fitting. I’m still doing it for myself of course, I very much want to see something come out of these stories, but it was the kid me that got it all started. I wanted to be a hero, I wanted to have powers and be able to do more. The best power I can manage now, as a ‘legal’ adult, is to make those dreams come true in some fashion. It’s almost like that main character is the kid in me now, and how I always hoped he’d be able to grow up. Every struggle, every friend, every emotional event that had sacrifices or important choices, I wanted to be able to live all that when I was younger. It all felt worth the risk just to be something more. So, that was a massively long-winded way of giving context to a reason I think I write stories nowadays. Honestly, this blog is more an excuse for me to let my brain go crazy when I can’t sleep at night, so basically every night, but I figure since it’s public I can at least try to write it in a way that makes sense to someone else who would be reading it. I’m already debating writing up snippets of stories I’m working on or actively coming up with. It wouldn’t be anything from the main series I’ve been working on for so long, or even the other stories that connect to them. Those ones are all decently fleshed out for the most part, and the first time I want those to ever be available to a possibly widespread audience is when they get the justice I feel they deserve. Some of the smaller ones I think of though, those would be fun to put here from time to time, something to break the pace of stupid-long storytelling that’s probably not actually interesting to many people. I’ll keep mulling it over, we’ll see what I decide eventually I guess. Written to the tune of: gal.exe - heartless

[frontofmymind]

#1.01

I just decided to check her Facebook page real quick, her latest post is literally about an upcoming concert asking others to go. Dunno if this is a sign but I’ve got that weird tingly feeling in my stomach like butterflies because of the coincidence. Still probably won’t do anything about it but I’ve still got that flow state going and felt like mentioning it

[frontofmymind]

#1

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle down kiddos. I’d say I’m a pretty reflective person. At weird times I just look back, I get thoughts of things I haven’t thought about in forever, one topic leads to another, it’s a process. Well, one thing I particularly, for whatever damn reason, tend to think about when driving to/from college, is an elementary school crush. Mind you, this time there was actually a reason for this being at least somewhere in my mind. A friend of mine who knows of this everlasting crush pointed out to me that she was single, information I’ll still never do anything with. Well, she’s not much of an elementary school crush anymore considering I’m about to graduate college, but the point is there. I remember in 1st grade, my class thought I had a big crush on her sister because I was doing my best to be polite to everyone. I tried engaging in conversation with the sister on occasion, helping her with assignments (I was at the top of my class [in 1st grade, oh boy what a genius amirite] so my teacher generally asked me to help others, something I happily obliged to), I was doing my best to be friendly. I remember a particular time where we were doing crafts, can’t quite remember what they were, but I went to put scissors back in the bin and the sister got up just after me. I put the lovely cutting-utensils away and began walking back to my desk. I turned at my row and saw her walking up to the bin and made a mad dash across the front of the classroom back to the bin to open it for her; I felt rude not having left it open for her even without the knowledge of her coming. One particular kid ended up making those ‘OOOH’ noises like it was such a big deal. I was embarrassed, but it was whatever. This was before I knew this crush existed, I only knew the sister. The next year, in second grade, I met that crush in my new class. Wow man, just wow. I was young, obviously, but her appearance hit me like a freight train, I had never been captured so purely by someone’s looks by that point in my life, and it’s honestly only happened like, twice since then. That was the start of the crush. In class if she was called on I would immediately direct my attention to her without making it too obvious (the same kid from the 1st grade class was in this 2nd grade class, and he made a point to watch things I did). I remember always wanting to be moved near her when seating assignments were changed. I remember playing with my friends during recess but always making a point to stumble around towards where she was so I could see that she was having fun. It was innocent back then, could be seen as creepy now, but we were kids, not like there was any ill-intent. Unfortunately, my memory isn’t quite perfect, so details get fuzzy here and there. It was either 3rd or 4th grade (I want to say 4th but I doubt myself either way), we had an ice cream social in the classroom. Some parents came up to help, including my mom. I had sat next to my crush at this point, it was a damn dream. Well, my eating habits then, and truthfully now, were a bit wild. My bowl of ice cream was one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of vanilla topped with a lot of chocolate sauce and sprinkles. I took small bites and more than anything just waited for it to melt so I could make ice cream soup. Even to this day I prefer drinking ice cream than eating it, milkshake or not. Well, I only remember this day in so much detail because someone was going around taking pictures of the class, all us kids enjoying ourselves. At some point a picture of me was taken, and she was there, next to me, in the background. My mom tends to keep a lot of those pictures, so I’m sure it exists somewhere in my house, but I haven’t seen it in well over a decade. On occasion I just remember it existing, remember those days in elementary school when I was so much more open and outgoing. Middle school eventually comes around, my crush and her sister are now on my bus, as well as the ‘OOOH’ kid (he was on my elementary bus as well) along with some other friends from our neighborhood. I remember I got an mp3 player in 6th grade. Most of the year was a blur, it was a lot of just experiencing depression for the first time. That mp3 player was a gift and a curse considering I’m one of those people that will listen to music that reinforces a bad mood. My parents were getting divorced the summer between 6th and 7th grade, I found that out sometime in the spring and it destroyed me. By that point, I had already been struggling with the fact that most of my elementary school friends had moved on and were mingling with the new kids that came from other elementary schools in the town to our middle school, this was just another weight. I remember the one day on the bus, right at the end of the year, where I was listening to a Secondhand Serenade album in my bus seat. I never had a seat-mate, but I was always right around this group of friends from elementary school, it was bittersweet. I was super upset with the concept that it would be my last time riding with all of them since I’d be moving to another part of the town with my mom. She made sure I’d stay in the same school, but being on an entirely different bus really sucked in my mind, I had grown up with these kids, I had grown up with a crush on this girl and now I’d be even further. Yikes. This was around the time I got a Facebook too, we were all around that age. 7th grade hits and I start messaging her on there, I also got a cell phone around this time. I remember when school would let out for the day and I’d see her pop online on Facebook I’d message her immediately trying to talk to her. Mind you, at this age, we all kind of started to understand crushes and relationships and most of us started experimenting with them. That was the ultimate goal for me of course, to start dating her. I had liked her for so long at this point, why wouldn’t I want to? Her dad got in a car accident sometime in 8th grade. I’m unsure how exact all this will be, but I remember the car being totaled and that he was decently injured. Well, every Christmas my grandparents would give me a $100, and at this point I had already made it a tradition to take that $100 and donate it, someone else needed it more, right? This Christmas, I decided to give it to them. I remember my mom being confused by my thought process but ultimately agreeing, my heart was in the right spot I guess. I figured I’d just go and give them the $100 bill and be done with it, but she went out and got a card and envelope as well as a big tin of popcorn to make it a bit more presentable. Was I motivated by that crush at all? Absolutely dude, 100% that was on my mind. But I also didn’t really have an idea of where to give the money that year, and I wanted to help them out somehow, so there was more to it than just some crush (thank goodness). Another fun part of 8th grade at my middle school is 8th grade formal, our first school dance OH BOY. I remember running from my class to my locker everyday after the final bell to get all my stuff packed so I could walk with her to her bus. I got lucky that semester, because my last class of the day was directly next to my locker, made things a lot easier for me to be an annoying creep. Well, with the thought of finally having a chance to ask my crush out for something, I asked her to the 8th grade formal. I had been trying to ask her for a few days at that point, but she was not going to her locker after class, someone else would catch us on the way to the buses and I’d back out, or I just kept wimping out on my own. But finally I did it the one day. She said she’d text me her response that day. Nothing. I message her the next day, and she turns me down. Turns out, she had started dating another guy in our grade right around that time and I had no idea. I don’t think they lasted through the summer, if they even made it that far, but damn was I devastated at that no. To this day, I still wonder how crummy of me was it to ask her to that dance after giving her family that money on Christmas. I worry that it felt like a bribe, that she thought of it too, that that was potentially why she said no, all stuff from over-thinking. But I still do wonder it from time to time, if she had connected to the two events at all like my crazy mind did (they weren’t connected at all, I didn’t even know of the dance existing until closer to March). High school comes and goes. She dates different people, she keeps growing up, everyday she looks more and more amazing to me. I never really talked to her actively after that point. I think the failed attempt at asking her to the dance just crushed me so hard I stopped bothering her. I had always been afraid I was trying to talk to her too much, looking too interested or creepy, and honestly, looking back, I definitely was. Even so, we graduated and moved on, we’re both in college. I don’t keep active track of her anymore, I just know that she’s doing decently and, as stated earlier, she’s currently single. I honestly stopped thinking about her for a few years. One day though, as I was driving back to college after a weekend at home, she just popped into my mind. It was at that moment that I realized, even 13 years later, I’m still crushing on her, I’m still not entirely over her, all that. Kind of crazy to think about. On those drives to/from college I have a lot of time with the radio, an open road, and my crazy mind, so it tends to wander. Now, every couple of drives to/from college my mind wanders to her, it’s almost like a crappy ritual now, one that I’m not always comfortable with occurring. I’ve thought about how if she ever got single again, would I finally try to put myself out there again? Will I ever get over her if I don’t just try again? I haven’t talked to her in years, I’m not sure what her interests could be or what she wants to even do with her life. I could save up money, reach out to her sister and see if she’s interested in concerts and buy tickets, ask her on a date, that’s a decent plan, right? Or is it just plain crazy? I remember after that first drive where I suddenly thought of her again, I was so freaked out that I messaged a group of friends from high school and told them what was going on. Most silently read the messages in the chat, one in particular actually talked to her on occasion and kept encouraging me to just reach out to her and try to be friends. I wasn’t against the idea, but nowadays it’s pretty frowned upon to just reach out to people out of nowhere, or else I probably would have given it a shot. In the end, I’m still just crushing on her at 21 like I was at 7 years old. I just hope she’s doing well, and that she’s happy. I don’t think I’ll ever have the courage to reach out to her, much less actually try to engage anything with her, no matter how much my poor heart complains, but it’s probably for the better. If one day that for whatever reason changes, maybe I’ll post a part two to this sad tale. Written to the tune of: Vince Kaichan - Metropolis