Like everyone says, I don’t know if I have ever fallen in love. But what I know is that you taught me love.
When I first met you, I was 7 and you were 8 – I was trying to mimic my mother’s patterns of dating older men I suppose. Despite our age difference, there we were, in the same English classroom. I don’t know if I was at too much of an advanced level for my age, or if you were falling behind.
At least we were together.
Back then, it was weird for us to interact in any sort of way. I was a girl, you were a boy, we were meant to be kept separate. Unless of course, we were ready to confess our profound love to each other or be ready to listen to some random boy called Joe scream mockingly in our faces “you want to have babies”, thinking he made some revolutionary controversial statement, despite all of us already being babies.
I started noticing you more; the way you tucked your dark blonde hair to the side whenever you wanted to write as it kept falling across the pages of your Star Wars notebook and the stupid jokes you made to impress the other boys in our class, even though they were not slightly as cool as you were. Acting like you were unbothered if I was staring your way when we both knew every glance was intentional.
From age seven, I became eight and from age eight you became nine. We still shared English class, every single Wednesday. All of a sudden, the most atrociously boring day of the week was replaced with vigorous excitement running through my veins, counting down the days and hours until I could see you again, only to say nothing. Wednesdays are still my favourite day. I had enough. I couldn’t just sit and wait for our boring English class just to be in your gaze. Plus, I knew you would never speak in front of those boys… External validation flourishes at a young age, I figured. It was time to take matters into my own hands, as I decided to ask your mum for your landline number after school, so we could schedule to hang out.
I called you the same day.
One phone call turned into two phone calls, and before we knew it we were talking every single day, and it was not even enough. I wanted to know everything about you. I needed to hear your stupid jokes 24/7. My grandma kept yelling at me because her calls from her hairdresser were not going through. I made a list of 100 questions, ranging all the way from “What’s your favourite animal?” to “Who’s your favourite character from iCarly?” to “Who would you kill if you had to kill anyone from your family?” . You never hesitated to answer any of them. At school, we pretended like we did not know each other.
You asked me out on a date.
Well, more like a “play-date.” My parents took me to your house which was an extremely long 4 minute walk, and I could feel tiny little bugs crawling on my skin all the way to my heart for the whole way, I swear. We played Fireboy and Watergirl and I pretended I kept dying so you could place your hands above mine and come closer to me. Then we moved to second base: Monopoly. I was pleasantly surprised by your financial strategies and wondered how you could be so bad at English.
You asked if I wanted to kiss. I wish men would now ask me if I want to kiss before kissing.
Sometimes I said yes, sometimes I said no. If I told you no, we would just continue by pulling a chance card. If I said yes, you would give me the fastest peck known to humanity.
One day you asked me to be your girlfriend.
You showered me with gifts every random date I made up to be our “anniversary” whenever I was in need of attention, as our little brains couldn’t retain such hefty information. My favourite one was a teddy bear with our initials on it that you asked your mum to order. I still say hi to her when I see her on the street.
Despite our “honeymoon phase” of 3 years, our age difference finally caught up to us. You were going to high school and I was stuck in primary.
We never formally broke up, just slowly drifted away.
I thought about texting you when I turned 12, but I found out a girl gave you a blowjob, and found it rather disgusting.
When I turned 19, you found me on Instagram and asked me how my grandmother is doing. We grew in different worlds, and a part of me wondered how it would be if that year’s difference didn’t exist and we moved to high school together.
I wish I had thanked you for asking to kiss me.
I wish I had thanked you for teaching me to love.
Anna Maria