Is there something you used to like that you are now embarrassed about?

 In my second grade class, I like liked a boy. His name was (REDACTED). 

Actually, because he’s a real person who likely still lives in the same town, and I don’t want you telling him about this, and just generally want to spare him embarrassment, you don’t get his real name. Let’s just call him… Bryce. 

I want to address the phrase “like liked,” as I believe it can help define how my perception of crushes has evolved over the years. In second grade, I was very open about using the word “crush,” and did, in fact, use that word in my eventual botched confession to… Bryce. However, by middle school, I refused to admit to any romantic feelings of any sort. Even my closest friends did not hear of my first “real crush” (based on a definition I picked up in 6th grade puberty class) until nearly two years after I recognized it as such. As I’m reflecting on this now, my first toe-dip into the pool of very young love might have been a leading contributor to my future crippling shame and embarrassment about crushes. 

This ill-fated romance with Bryce started on an ordinary day. The whole class had been split into partnerships to play with the vocabulary flashcards, and I was paired with Bryce. Prior to this interaction, I had barely recognized that he existed. But then, as we were going over the flashcards, he made the silliest faces to go along with the words. He became the picture on the flashcards. I was so amused by this pure creativity, this unfettered humor of supreme sophistication, that I immediately decided I was in love.

This especially clueless version of myself (probably marginally less clueless than I am today) believed wholeheartedly in love at first sight. I thought you just see a “desireable” attribute in someone and then just pick to have a crush on them. I might have been onto something with the desireable attribute and the picking, actually. But as far as the feeling of romantic interests, 2nd grade Fallon didn’t get it. She saw it as a very conscious, understandable, logical process she could follow step by step. 1) recognize that someone is funny, 2) decide you have a crush, 3) confess and fall in love or whatever. Perhaps steps 1 and 2 still work today, but step 3 was my fatal flaw. 

When “Bryce” found the note strategically, sneakily, radio-rebelliously (I was obsessed with that movie at the time, and very deliberately adopting Debby Ryan’s shy smirk, because of course that’s how you get a man) placed on his desk, I distinctly remember the boy sitting next to him reading it, in choppy 2nd-grade fashion: 

“Dear ‘Bryce,’ I have a (a confused pause) crush on you.” I don’t really remember what this deskmate’s face looked like in that moment, only that trying to remember brings up images of Chris Pratt, so maybe he looked like baby Chris Pratt. Regardless, I imagine shock, awe, congratulations etched into his features as he beheld the boy, nay, the man on whom someone had a crush. But Baby Pratt had missed the crucial word, the most impressive word on the paper. So of course, ‘Bryce’ corrected the other boy, reading and emphasizing that missing word for him. “MAJOR.” They locked eyes for a moment, as the implications of a MAJOR crush sank in. Bryce was disturbed. I saw it on his face. He walked up to the teacher, secret admirer note in hand, and turned it in. 

My heart sank. What had I been thinking? What had I done? I’D UPSET BRYCE!!! I’d broken the rules! I was going to prison!

I wonder how this event affects Bryce today. A significant portion of my shame in the matter, in the following years, stemmed from the idea that I had deeply disturbed him. But, if someone had written me a secret admirer note in 2nd grade, what would I have done? Would I have panicked? Would I have given it to my teacher and forgotten about it in a matter of minutes? 

I was horrifically embarrassed about this situation for years after. Rejection is crippling, what can I say? Besides, I was convinced I had committed an atrocious crime against “Bryce” in expressing romantic interest, and should therefore spend the rest of my life in a hole in the ground devoid of such fairytale ideals. Now, my perspective has shifted. I am far enough removed from the situation that I appreciate what my second grade teacher likely saw: stupid kids getting up to adorable shenanigans. She saw a sweet little girl attempting to pursue the very complex and mature concept of romance, and failing. It was a simpler, lower-stakes echo of what she might have experienced many times before that day, played out in the safe haven of her classroom. 

I am still mortified that I thought I knew what love was, what romance should look like. Because now that I’ve lived a few more years and watched some real-life relationships and read too many YA fantasy books, it seems painfully obvious that there isn’t one right way to pursue it. And even more painfully obvious that DCOMs are not the right guide. 

Further, Bryce’s complete and unabashed rejection pains me deeply because it required a huge amount of vulnerability to put these feelings out there. If, like 2nd grade Fallon, you try to just pour them out to someone, you are not emotionally safe. The object of those feelings can easily be put off, and reject them. That is what happened to that adorable 7-year-old. And then she had to get down on the metaphorical floor, into a compromised position, and mop them up. Her instinct, for years, was to hide that she had been in such a weak position. Perhaps the proximity to the pain and weakness was why these events were so difficult to share in the immediate years, but with the safety of distance I’ll bare them to a wide audience today.