so I experienced an emotion (yuck) a while ago and wrote this to get rid of it (be warned that this is pure kitsch)
It started, as things of this nature often tend to do, with a smile and a simple “Hi!”. I didn’t think much of it. Except perhaps, “Hey, maybe I could make a new friend.”. And I did. And it was wonderful, for some time at least.
I met Henri on the first day of school two years ago. She was sitting on a garishly green sofa in the great hall, looking up at another student who I had seen around but whose name I didn’t know. He was standing in front of her as the two talked. She was laughing.
A few minutes later (her friend had left to find his classroom) she looked around, still smiling, and started a conversation with me. Me. To this day I still can’t imagine what made her speak to me of all people. “Hi!,” she said, accompanied by the ever-present gleaming smile. “Are you nervous as well? About the new school year, meeting new people and all that, I mean.”
And that was the first time I ever talked to Henri. It turned out it wouldn’t be the last time either because we ended up in the same classes. Soon, we were in the same friend group, the same carpool, hell, even the same book club.
Henri became my friend, just as I’d hoped she would. But then Henri became so much more. It was only that I, ever the fool, hardly noticed that until it was much too late.
I was driving home from school that day. The sun shining low through the trees that lined the sides of the street, so low that I was thinking about pulling down the visor. But even that couldn’t have protected my eyes from the blinding smile that was directed at me from the passenger seat. Henri’s, of course.
We were goofing around as usual. Making jokes about dropping out of school to live a peaceful life in the woods and I can’t remember exactly what I said but all of a sudden her smile changed. It wasn’t as bright anymore. It didn’t shine on the whole world, for everybody to see. No, suddenly her smile was like that tiny ray of sunshine that peeks through your blinds early in the morning to let you know it’s going to be a beautiful summer day. And Henri’s smile that day, it shone directly at me, for me.
“I really like you, you know?”
And that’s when I realised I really liked her too, even though it probably had been obvious from the start.
I didn’t tell her. And maybe that’s where it all went downhill, I don’t know. Maybe things would be different now, if I hadn’t just grinned back at her that day and pulled down the visor to block out all that overwhelming light.
Many months later and I feel like the people up at the north pole must feel, where not a single ray of sunshine touches the bland and frozen ground for the better half of the year. Sure, I know the sun exists and I know somewhere it shines on somebody, just not on me. I only get to watch as the sun rises seemingly a million miles away from me and its glimmers fall on a person who I know deserves to feel their warmth, but still I’m sad because it’s not me.
Because it could have been me.