I'm Just a Dreamer

I didn’t believe it. People said I was too young. They said our age was too far apart. I never knew…

I met my crush for the first time when he came over to my house. He was 16, I was 10 (DONT mention age here). He was the sweetest guy I’d ever met. He was everything: funny, witty, smart, playful. Everyday, I’d sit and imagine what it would be like to spend one whole day with him. Together. Alone.

Years passed, I turned 12, he turned 18. The last time he came over we had a little conversation. He kept on asking me about school dances and that I should sneak out to go to one. He said that maybe he’d go with a friend of his, a Persian girl with a heavy accent.

I was such a dreamer. I kept a journal of the boys I liked, mostly filled with pages of him. The time at his house he showed me his art. The card he made for Mission Art Walk Day. I even saved a picture of him on my computer (well…two). I convinced myself that he liked me. I guess I was wrong.

One day, I came home from basketball practice. It was dark, and so hard to see without my glasses. I had a habit of looking at his house, which was on my block, at the attic window, to see if it was on. I saw the front door was opened, and he and another girl with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was laughing, probably at something she said, and I was staring, my heart breaking. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know I was there. Yet. Time slowed, as it seemed, and he looked up. Shock, confusion, and something else flashed across his face, and then I was gone, away down the block in my dad’s car. The end of that moment.

He’s off to college now, and I’ll hardly get to see him. He’ll never like me, but somewhere inside me, something keeps hoping he will. I just keep on dreaming.