LESSON-1

Always do what your heart tells you.

     I swear to fucking god I knew it; I knew he was perfect. I just felt it in my bones, you know the way he smiled, the way he looked so innocent and how angelic his aura felt. He was the guy I've dreamt about my entire childhood, no not any actor or prince charming I just wanted to be his girl, I guess. I don’t know I was so obsessed about him and him alone that I never pictured us together or like it felt so surreal to even think about that. I remember how I enjoyed looking at his face, I felt so charmed when he didn’t notice me admiring his face, and then when he did, I couldn’t look into his eyes fearing he would magically know the number of butterflies I got. No, it wasn’t awkward or anything back then but yeah it is awkward for me now after what seems like a lifetime ago. I liked him from the time I got the senses to notice everybody in the class. Yeah, I’m talking about when I was around 5 or 6 years old. I didn’t really know what a crush was back then but, it all started when I couldn’t help myself looking at his face constantly not in a creepy way lol, I just liked to see him. Really observing what made him laugh, what made him angry. I adored his expressions. I’d smile whenever he would. How I'd desperately wish for the teacher to make us sit together. I hid it all pretty well mainly because I just didn’t know what else to do.

      In third grade we formed a group of 5 who’d just have funny conversation and like I don’t know third grade stuff. He was in it as well and this was when we started talking a lot. That year, he started wearing spectacles and then two years later, we were in different classrooms and I was kinda sad about it my entire vacation. I’m so glad I didn’t take the same option as he did in order to be in the same class. So at least I was not a complete idiot. Although I was thinking about making that decision. In sixth grade I realized the term for what I was feeling for this guy was “crush”. Crush, yes man I had a fireball crush on this guy. There were a lot of gossips and talks about these things and when people asked me, I would say Cedric Diggory. Nah not for too long, so I told few of my girls that I had a thing for this guy and god all my friends got to know and they were cracked. Life after sixth grade became miserable. So, seventh grade really fucked me up. Like real bad. So bad that my self-esteem was negative, below zero.

     The guy I liked kinda made it hard for me to live just because he realized that I liked him. I’d kept this secret inside me for 7 years and obviously it would be hard for me to face this and finally tell him. There were talks that he was leaving the city next year and so this compelled me to let him know that I liked him before he left, not having any regrets later. The whole time I had liked him and he only realizes this when I made up my mind and expressed myself to him one day. He didn’t say anything. It's crazy how one could be utterly possessed into liking someone and the other person wouldn't even have a clue about it. Personally, it was an earnestly bold and mature move of mine. But things got topsy turvy the next day in school when he told everybody about this including his family. The fact that I genuinely liked him triggered him. That’s when I unravelled his true colours, the guy I liked was not perfect just because he had the face which I found perfect or the way he was. His friends and all the people at school constantly annoyed me, teased me and made fun of me for expressing my feelings. There were a lot of people who considered what I did as a taboo, approaching a guy, like random unknown kids and parents would talk about this behind my back.

      A 13-year-old going through this crap just because she was too bold is awesome honestly, I wouldn’t be able to be here sharing this with so much of confidence and acceptance if it weren’t for those horrible phases. Maybe the villain in my story isn’t the guy I liked but my feelings. That I let him throw so much crap at me and suppress myself. I let him control my peace because I was so young and naïve. I faced a lot of criticism and the fact that he never left the city made it so fucking awkward and miserable later on. Also, it was hard to accept the fact that the guy I "not so secretly" adored most of my existence would make me go through something like this without saying a word or considering the entire havoc from my perspective. He broke my heart. After all that he did and caused me, whenever we saw each other at school his face was filled with hate and disgust. I’m sorry man I didn’t know genuine honesty offended few people.

      I never really got over this until after I left school, because it was just unbelievable that I brought so much chaos by myself. The kind of chaos I required in order to grow but was indeed too wild and wretched. "Always do what your heart tells you", that’s what I did and the outcome I received wasn’t just a storm of melancholy that followed which was traumatic yet temporary, but also mostly the wisdom and power I got because of it. Going through this was hard, uncomfortable and self-loathing but growth is all of this. You know you’re a badass when you can think about an unfair and a very hard phase you experienced and really feel so proud of yourself for making it through all of it, the "mistakes" you called back then don’t really matter to you anymore, the people who let you down are long gone from your mind, but it’s okay to reminisce those memories, it shows that you were a real fighter and how much you value growth. After seventh grade, my self-esteem boosted up so much, I'm thankful for myself. Now I know the value of self-love, and how important it is to never let yourself down no matter what because we all go through things alone at the end of the day because secretly, we're all living for ourselves. Things will always get better. Way better.