I Didn’t Realize She Was My First Crush Until She Had a Boyfriend
Sometimes the universe has a sick sense of humor.
Sometimes I wonder WHY the universe has a sick sense of humor.
Because out of all the girls I questioned my sexuality over, the first girl I genuinely liked wasn’t a celebrity. She wasn’t a fictional character. She wasn’t some random pretty girl I passed at the mall and never saw again.
And somehow… I didn’t realize it until almost a year later.
If you’ve read some of my other posts, you know junior year was when my bisexual identity crisis really kicked into high gear. It wasn’t exactly new. I’d been questioning on and off since I was ten, but I’d gotten really good at shoving those thoughts into the back of my mind so I could focus on things that actually had deadlines. School. Theatre. College applications. AP classes. Anything that didn’t require me to ask myself, “Wait… what the hell am I?”
Around that time, I had a friend. We’ll call her Molly.
Molly is bi, and for some reason, she was the only person I wanted to tell that I was even QUESTIONING.
Looking back, I find that so interesting. I had friends I’d known since kindergarten. Friends I’d grown up with for over twelve years. Friends I was objectively closer to. But telling them never even crossed my mind.
Molly was the only person I wanted to talk to.
I don’t know if some part of me subconsciously knew she’d understand, or if I just felt safe around her in a way I couldn’t explain yet. Maybe it was both.
At the time, we were inseparable.
Butterflies disguised as friendship
We jokingly flirted with each other all the time, but it was exactly that… a joke.
At least, I thought it was.
She was also a really affectionate person. She’d hug me, lean on me, fix my hair, grab my hand while talking.
Physical touch has never really been my thing. If most people randomly touched me, I’d probably recoil like a startled cat. I’m the type of person who accidentally turns every hug into an awkward side hug because I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing.
There was one day I somehow managed to put an earring through my ear creating a completely new piecing. To this day, I still don’t know how I accomplished that. I spent the entire day dramatically complaining that my ear hurt because, frankly, I deserved an award for somehow giving myself a brand-new piercing by accident.
At one point, she walked over, gently grabbed my face, tucked my hair behind my ear, and leaned in to look at it.
I think someone even has a video of that moment somewhere, and now I’m weirdly tempted to go find it just to see if my face completely betrayed me.
At the time, though, I didn’t think anything of it.
I just thought she made me nervous.
Which is apparently what I called attraction before I knew what attraction actually felt like.
There were so many little moments like that.
She’d call me during her lunch breaks at work almost every weekend, and I’d look forward to those phone calls way more than I’d like to admit. We’d talk about absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. Looking back, those fifteen or twenty minute phone calls somehow became the highlight of my weekends.
Then there was our junior year musical.
We were getting fitted for costumes, and I remember seeing her walk out wearing hers.
Not in the “my friend looks pretty today” kind of way.
The kind of beautiful where you accidentally stare a little too long before remembering you’re supposed to blink.
The kind of beautiful where your brain goes suspiciously quiet for a second.
I didn’t realize what that feeling was.
I just chalked it up to admiration.
Because that’s what I did with every confusing feeling I had toward women.
The bus ride I’ll probably never forget
Then there was the bus ride.
I was dealing with some stuff at home that year. I won’t get into the details because that’s not really the point of this story, but it was one of those periods where everything feels heavier than usual.
I’m the type of person who doesn’t like bringing family problems to school. I like leaving them at the front door if I can. School has always been my escape, and I was convinced I was doing a pretty decent job pretending everything was fine.
Over a year later, I still think I was.
She kept asking if I was okay, and I kept insisting I was fine.
Eventually, on our painfully long fifty-five minute bus ride home, I cracked.
Every reason I felt guilty.
Every reason I was angry.
She didn’t interrupt me once.
She didn’t immediately try to solve every problem.
Sometimes I think people underestimate how intimate it is to simply feel understood.
She sat there while I quietly cried on a school bus, trying not to let anyone else hear me, and somehow made me feel like I wasn’t crazy for feeling the way I did.
She made me feel lighter.
I don’t think she’ll ever realize how much that conversation meant to me.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
Our friend group completely imploded.
If you’ve ever been in a high school friend group breakup, you know they’re somehow more emotionally exhausting than actual breakups.
I’m usually not scared of confrontation. Honestly, if you’ve met me, that’s probably one of the last words you’d use to describe me.
I’ll have uncomfortable conversations.
I don’t love confrontation, but I don’t avoid it either.
Not because I thought she’d yell at me.
Not because I thought she’d hate me.
Because I cared what she thought.
She had hurt me, along with a few of our other friends. To be fair, other people had done objectively worse things.
confronting her hurt the most.
I remember rehearsing what I wanted to say over and over in my head because I didn’t want to lose her.
Then, after everything happened…
There wasn’t some huge screaming match.
And that silence was somehow worse.
There was this constant heaviness sitting in my chest.
Like I’d lost someone I talked to every day and suddenly didn’t know what to do with myself.
I missed sending her random TikToks.
I missed the phone calls.
I missed telling her about stupid little things that happened during my day.
When she reached out and apologized, she didn’t make excuses.
She acknowledged that she’d hurt me.
And I forgave her almost immediately.
Which is incredibly unlike me.
I’m capable of holding a grudge with Olympic-level commitment.
In fact, there are still people from that whole situation that I’m not exactly rushing to reconnect with.
I just wanted my friend back.
Looking back now, I think that’s another clue I completely missed.
Because if I’m being honest…
I wasn’t nearly as devastated about losing the rest of the group.
Losing her was what broke my heart.
I just didn’t know that’s what it was yet.
I Didn’t Realize She Was My First Crush Until She Had a Boyfriend
Then she got a boyfriend.
Eventually, she started dating someone.
When I first found out, I was genuinely happy for her.
He’s a good boyfriend. Maybe a little immature sometimes, but he treats her well, he makes her laugh, and that’s what matters. I never looked at their relationship with resentment. If anything, I was excited for her. She’d tell me little updates, I’d ask questions, and I was honestly just happy that someone I cared about so much was being cared for in return.
For months, I didn’t think much of their relationship.
There was one moment that always stuck with me.
He had to give a speech about her in front of a crowd.
Nothing huge. Just a few minutes talking about someone he loved.
he didn’t prepare anything.
Now, to be fair, I know public speaking isn’t everyone’s thing. I know he gets nervous. I genuinely don’t think he meant to fumble it. But he knows he gets that way, and chose not to write anything! Even simple bullets or sentences he could build off of could suffice, but nope! But because he hadn’t prepared, he kept losing his train of thought, jumping between ideas, forgetting what he wanted to say, and awkwardly trying to piece everything together as he stood there.
Watching it unfold, I just kept thinking…
She deserved better than this.
Not because he isn’t a good boyfriend.
But she’s the kind of person who deserves someone who spends fifteen extra minutes writing the speech. Someone who sits there rewriting sentences because they want every word to sound perfect. Someone who thinks, “This is about her. She deserves my best.”
I could’ve written that speech.
Hell, I probably could’ve given one off the top of my head.
Not because I know her better than he does.
But because I notice the little things.
The way she laughs when something genuinely catches her off guard.
The way she takes care of everyone else before she takes care of herself.
The way she’ll celebrate someone else’s accomplishment before mentioning one of her own.
The way she always seems to know exactly what to say when someone needs comfort.
Maybe everyone who’s had a crush thinks they’d make the better partner.
Maybe that’s all this was.
But I remember leaving that day thinking that if I ever loved someone the way I loved her, there wouldn’t be a chance I’d stand up there unprepared.
I’d have written that speech weeks in advance.
The realization hit me like a truck.
Then one afternoon during senior year rehearsal, everything clicked.
I’d already finished blocking one of my scenes, so I was sitting on the edge of the stage while the ensemble rehearsed.
Nothing special had happened.
No dramatic movie moment.
No slow-motion eye contact.
No orchestral swell in the background.
(Although, honestly, my brain probably added one afterward.)
It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of freezing cold water over my head.
Because suddenly every weird feeling I’d had over the last year made sense.
Wanting to tell only her.
Looking forward to every phone call.
Forgiving her so quickly.
Being terrified to lose her.
Missing her more than anyone else.
And almost immediately after that realization came another one.
There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
She already had a boyfriend.
One I had absolutely no desire to sabotage.
Realizing I had completely missed my chance before I’d even realized there was one.
Loving someone from the sidelines
There were moments after that where I’d catch myself feeling strangely protective of her.
One of her longtime friends wasn’t treating her well.
She’d vent to me about it sometimes, and every time she did, I’d get irrationally angry on her behalf.
Not because I wanted to control who she was friends with.
Because it hurt seeing someone I cared about get treated like she wasn’t enough.
I wanted to tell her she deserved better.
I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to earn kindness.
I wanted to be the person she leaned on.
Because that’s what friends do.
I didn’t want to overstep. I didn’t want to insert myself into a situation that wasn’t mine. So I waited until she was ready to tell me what was going on instead of prying.
If I were her girlfriend…
I would’ve asked what was wrong before she even had to say anything.
I would’ve sat with her until she was ready to talk.
I would’ve reminded her that she deserved better.
I hope her boyfriend did those things.
I just had to watch from the sidelines until she was ready to catch me up on the gossip.
That was harder than I expected.
The question I can’t stop thinking about
A few weeks ago, I asked her what she and her boyfriend planned to do when she left for college.
She kind of shrugged and said…
they didn’t really know yet.
that answer has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since.
Their relationship isn’t my business.
I’m not sitting here hoping it falls apart.
I hope they figure it out because she’s happy, and she deserves to be.
But I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a tiny part of me that wonders.
What if I’d realized all of this junior year?
Back when we talked every day.
Back when we were inseparable.
Would I have asked her out?
Or would I have ruined one of the best friendships I’ve ever had over feelings that maybe weren’t meant to become anything more?
And that’s somehow harder than getting rejected would’ve been.
Because rejection gives you an answer.
This just leaves you with possibilities.
Loving someone sometimes means letting them be happy
We still jokingly flirt sometimes.
I’m not entirely joking anymore.
I’ve gone back and forth a hundred times over whether I should ever tell her.
Sometimes I think she deserves to know.
Sometimes I think it would only make things weird.
She once told me I’m one of the only friends from high school she genuinely sees herself keeping in touch with after graduation.
I don’t want to lose that.
Not because I’m scared of rejection.
Because our friendship means more to me than finally getting something off my chest.
I think that’s what people don’t talk about enough when it comes to crushes.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do isn’t confess.
Sometimes it’s respecting the life someone has chosen, even if that life doesn’t include you in the way you secretly wished it would.
And maybe that’s what I’m choosing.
She unknowingly helped me find myself
I don’t know if she’ll ever read this.
Part of me hopes she never does.
Another part of me wonders if she’s known this whole time.
All I know is that she taught me something I’ll never forget.
Sometimes your first real crush doesn’t arrive with fireworks or some dramatic movie soundtrack.
Sometimes it looks like fifty-five minute bus rides.
Weekend phone calls during lunch breaks.
Butterflies when someone brushes your hair behind your ear.
Forgiving someone faster than everyone else because the thought of losing them hurts more than your own pride.
Watching them dance from the edge of a stage and suddenly understanding why nobody else had ever made you feel quite like they did.
For the longest time, I thought discovering I was bisexual would be one big, obvious moment.
Instead, it happened quietly.
Tiny moments that didn’t seem important until I looked back and realized they had been telling me the truth all along.
Maybe that’s why I’ll always have a soft spot for her.
Not because she’s the girl I never dated.
Not because she’s the one that got away.
But because she was the first person who unknowingly made me realize that the way I loved women was never hypothetical.
And without ever meaning to…
she helped me understand myself before I ever had the words to do it on my own.
I hope we stay in touch once we both head off to college.
I hope her boyfriend continues to treat her well, and I hope they figure out what they want their future to look like.
I hope she continues to realize her worth and never lets people walk all over her the way some people have in the past.
Because she deserves so much more than that.
She’s incredibly intelligent.
She’s the type of person who makes everyone around her feel a little lighter just by being there.
And no matter what happens, I’ll always be grateful that I got to know her.
I’m lucky enough to call her my friend.
Even if a part of me will always wish I could’ve called her something more.
