Letters to My Crush

Grade 4

I still remember the first time I saw you very vividly. Your younger brother was the new student in my grade and I thought he looked pretty good but that was until off-time when I saw him talking to you and I thought "Wow, God really did a good job on this one".

Growing up in a conservative family, I felt guilty about liking someone from the different gender but when I saw you, I felt the word "Crush" years before I even knew what it meant. I saw you talking to your brother and my 4th grade self blushed so hard that I half-ran back home. Then I came to know that your family had moved into our neighbourhood so every time I went out of my home, I tried to look good just because I might run into you.

A few days later came the evening when we got introduced. I was playing with my friends in the community park when you and your brother came and decided to play with us. My sister asked your name and to help her get the pronunciation right, you wrote your name on the park wall with a chalk and couldn't help but admire your good behaviour.

Gradually we started becoming friends and playing together. You thought that I was friendly and could easily make friends but you didn't know that you were my first friend who actually gave a shit about me. Who actually cared about me and the first one to actually show interest in being my friend while the others treated me like they couldn't wait to get rid of the naive little ugly girl with big eyes that looks scary.

You started to call me from your apartment building whenever you saw me coming home from school just to say "Hi" or "Have a good day".

You joined the same community school (for religious ed and its different than normal school and is at night) as me and even though we weren't in the same grade, we were still friends.

A few months later, we both participated in a traditional event of community school in which we had to sing a song and 6 kids (3 girls 3 boys) were paired together( a boy and a girl together). You were to stand in the middle with another girl from your grade which made me so jealous and i cried all night before the event because I wasn't her and you were so out of my league.

Before the start of the event, our head teacher told us girls to go find a traditional hat fast because they just realized they needed it (i know terrible organization), so i went to an old lady's house (whom i knew) and borrowed it from her however the other two girls couldn't find a hat so by some amazing miracle, by the one who guards our lives, the teacher decided to put me in the middle with you so that i could wear the hat. All my friends told me I looked stupid and ugly in the hat and laughed about it but you told me that the hat made my eyes seem shinier and prettier. And we sang together in the event.

That was undoubtedly the best night of my life.

Days went by. You would greet me every time you saw me outside. But then something changed. I stopped attending community school and we stopped seeing each other so often. I started growing up and something in me changed which ,i don't know, may be made me rude or just plain idiotic. I avoided looking at you when you passed me in the neighbourhood. We both stopped playing at the community park ultimately we both stopped talking.

4 years passed. Then in 8th grade I was talking to my (ex) good friend about her crush and then I realized that was what I felt for you. Sleepless nights and days of regrets later, I am finally writing this down and I realize how much of an idiot I was.

We could have had such a cute love story. But it ended because I failed to acknowledge the one good and pure thing God sent into my life. I tried to convince myself and muster up the courage to restart attending the community school but it had been 2 years since I left and my social anxiety made it worse to re-attend a place where I had no friends.

Time has passed since then. Maybe I was hoping it wouldn't and we would stay little kids all life. But what's done is done. And now it's even too late to re-attend community school because you are no longer there. You moved away to another city, a thousand miles away from me. And I regret not doing anything while you were here, but I don't regret meeting you or cherishing the true feeling of caring in friendship.

I have kind of outgrown the crush by now. But that is not why I'm writing this letter. I'm writing this letter to give me closure by saying all those things left unsaid by me. I'm writing this letter to thank you for making me feel like I was actually wanted when nobody wanted to be my friend. I'm writing this letter to thank you for making me feel pretty when the others wouldn't stop telling me how bad I looked.

So Thank You.

Thank You for showing me what real friendship is. Thank You for making me realize I deserved better than how my "friends" treated me as. Thank You for being the one good thing I looked forward to each day. Thank You for teaching my 4th Grade self to put her self-respect above any friendship.

Thank You for being my one true friend when everybody else ignored me.

Even though our friendship didn't last forever, it taught me a lot of things and gave me a lot of memories that I'll continue to cherish forever.

So I'm posting this Thank You letter on your birthday even though I know you will never read it ('cause if you do, it might be embarrassing) not because I want you to miss the old days but simply because I wanted to write it out in words; the impact you had on my life.

Once again,

Thank You.