love notes

Yes, it's Valentine's Day yet again. Red and Pink, Balloons and Teddy Bears, Candy Hearts and SpongeBob sentiments. In my desk at work, I have a collection of love notes that I have found in the hallways of our school. Sometimes they are actually written for a crush, sometimes about a crush, or just about love or like or lust or the infuriating and life-altering combination of all three that grips you in middle school and suddenly turns each and every day at school into the nucleus of human existence on planet Earth and the very possible end or beginning of life as you know it. Someday, when my collection grows large enough, I want to make a book out of them because I'm a sucker for nostalgia and besides, what adult wouldn't want to remember what love sounded like before you knew it wasn't enough? I think it's only when you start to forget what it felt like to be a child, that you begin to die.

The nucleus of my world in 6th grade was Tony P. He was my best friend and I was a tomboy so I wasn't supposed to give a shit about my guy friends besides what time they could hang out till after school, what Nintendo games they had, what thier mom's stocked their fridges with and what kinda bike or skateboard they rode. Unfortunately, when 6th grade hit, so did the crush. They call it a crush for a reason you know. I was thoroughly, entirely crushed that all of a sudden I wanted to be the girl he liked, instead of making fun of the girls he liked. It fucked up my whole game. I dreamt about him at night and then became certain he could tell in the daytime. My face would burn when he tried to talk to me about playing basketball after school or going to the corner store, for no reason other than I was harboring this awful hateful secret: I loved him. I loved him so much I wanted everything in the universe to cave in on us and let me have the chance to be with him - without the unbearable weight of what that would mean to our friendship, and what people would say about me, how much they'd make fun of me, and how he would most likely be forced to reject me, even if he did like me, to protect himself from what people would think if he went out with me...ME, the one all the boys kicked it with but would never KICK IT with and who was probably a dyke anyways and seriously pretty weird even if she wasn't.

For an entire year, I thought of nothing but being his girlfriend. I wrote about it and sang about it and cried about it and lost sleep over it, but through all my pain and suffering, I never told a soul. I watched him fall for other girls, often being forced to act as a liaison to tell the girl he liked her and ask if she wanted to go with him. I let him be on the playground, watched from the corner at dances and the skating rink while he put his hands on hips and shoulders and necks of girls I had nothing in common with and didn't want to be friends with, but envied with my entire being nonetheless. We still hung out almost every day; I knew him like a brother - actually I knew him better than my brother. I'd hang out at his house, shooting hoops in his driveway, playing with his two little shit tzu puppies, talking to his mom, watching cable that I didn't have, till I couldn't risk being any later getting home without getting grounded and therefore being kept from spending more time with him. I remember trick-or-treating with him and going into the only haunted house I've ever been in (I still can't go, they freak me out) even though I was terrified, because I didn't want him to see me acting like a baby. It felt like nearly everything I did that year was for him or about him, until one day he came to school and told me his dad got a new job and he had to move to Indiana. I was crushed.

Before Tony left for Indiana, I somehow summoned the courage to tell him how I felt. I guess I figured if he wasn't around anymore, no one would find out and ridicule me for making my grand declaration of love, and if he rejected me, well at least I wouldn't have to see him every day in school. He would be in an entirely different state and gossip couldn't possibly travel that far, right? So I waited until the day he was leaving. I told him in his empty basement. I can't remember what I said or how I even managed to say it, but he told me that he had liked me the entire time too, but now that he was leaving there really wasn't much to do about it. He would go to Indiana, I would stay in Michigan, we would go on with our lives and stay friends. He would visit, keep in touch, whatever, but that was that. I remember being completely stunned. I don't know if he said that because he wanted to make me feel good and he knew he could and it wouldn't have any consequence because he was leaving, or if it was actually true. Either way, he left me feeling loved and hopeful - hopeful that love could happen in impossible situations and that all I needed was the courage to love out loud. I also felt kinda ripped off and pissed that he never said nuthin or made a move, but I moved on after a few months and loved someone else even harder and faster, because that's what you do in middle school when love is enough to make u get up in the morning and go to school and enough to make u never want to get up again.