“EPIC FAIL”…that’s what the Facebook message read that I had scattered across my iPhone after revealing my two year crush on this girl that has consumed my mind since the first day we met. Well, maybe we never formerly met; she worked as a desk assistant in my dorm during college, I was a resident, and over the course of my junior year I developed this secret crush on her. She has no idea that I scoured the internet trying to find any piece of information on her, or that I saved her Facebook profile picture into my phone and I look it when I’m having a bad day and I need motivation, or that I wrote a poem about her and blogged it on my Tumblr…she couldn’t possibly know all those things because she doesn’t know me.
I had gotten some dating advice from an online dating coach who advised me to express my feelings and tell her how I truly feel without worrying about what she’ll think, “Don’t say anything that you think will produce a positive response tell her how you truly feel about her.” So with that in mind, I wrote her a Facebook message that went as follows. (This is a copy and paste from our actual conversation.)
I’m having a hard time finding a way to even begin to say this without it sounding creepy or weird. Nonetheless, I’ll make an attempt and if I fall flat, so be it. Last year you worked, as a desk assistant in Wall & Grand and one day we exchanged looks, eye contact. It could have been nothing more than a coincidental glance, but from that moment forward you had my attention. It was something about you that intrigued me and I couldn’t explain it. The school year ended and just like every other crush I’ve had I figured eventually I would forget about it. However, things didn’t happen like that.
Occasionally, the thought of you would sneak back into my mind. You never get a second chance to make a first impression and that particular saying that sounds oh so cliché, but it makes sense whenever I think of you. I have absolutely no idea what writing something like this would even do considering I don’t know you. Even so, I just wanted to tell you that I thought you were beautiful, the long dark hair, the smile, the eyes… I admired it all. If there’s a man lucky enough to have a women like you on his arm I hope he tells you that every chance he gets. In all reality I’ll probably never get the chance to see you again or talk to you, but a part of me just wanted to get that off my chest. In a way this is my attempt at making a second first impression or say what I never got the chance too. I’m not asking for anything and you don’t have to respond but I feel like I had to say that.
Her response:
“Epic fail at not coming off slightly creepy. But I appreciate the kind words”.
There’s a certain beauty in not really knowing someone because in those moments you spend fantasizing they’re perfect, no arguments, no canceled dinner dates, no missed text messages. In a way, you fall more in love with the fantasy than the actual reality because in reality people aren’t perfect. Love isn’t some romance comedy where two people fall in love in during a montage of cute dates with smooth R&B music playing in the background after randomly bumping into each other on the subway. In the real world people move on, they change, and sometimes the opportunity passes. We love to think we’re more important than we really are, and to some people that might be true, but in the grand scene of things life moves on without us and the people we fall for might not feel the same way.
Was my attempt at reveling my crush an epic fail, I’m not exactly sure, but I did what so many people would never have the heart to do…express how they truly feel without caring what it costs them or who finds out. That day I was without question the bravest I’ve ever been. If your reading this and you feel a certain way about someone I would advise you to tell them, sometimes holding in your feelings is easier than being who you really are, but the liberation of reveling whatever it is you’ve been feeling is more beautiful than anything. 
