The Longest Crush Ever

“EPIC FAIL”…that’s what the Facebook message splayed across my iPhone screen read after confessing my two-year crush to the girl that has consumed my mind since the first day we met. Well, maybe we never formally met. She worked as a desk assistant in my dorm during college while 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 and all information on her, or that I saved her Facebook profile picture in my phone and look at 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 Tumbler…she couldn’t possibly know all of 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,” he told me. And so with that in mind I wrote her a Facebook message that went as follows (copy and pasted 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 on you had my attention. There 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 I’d eventually 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 though that particular saying sounds oh-so-cliché, it still 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 to. 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 they’re perfect, no arguments, no canceled dinner dates, no missed text messages. In a way, it’s easier to fall in love with the fantasy than the actual reality, because in reality no one is perfect. Love isn’t some romance comedy where two people fall in love after just a montage of cute dates backed by smooth R&B 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 scheme 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.