In Which Paul is Left with a Teddy Bear not Meant for Him
Hello friends! It has been awhile since my last post. I have finally moved out of my parent’s house, so I’ve been very busy to say the least.
I mentioned that my contributions to Golden Dreams will be inspired by some of my life experiences and this first one taught me a lot about living life with courage and strength.
In the 6th grade, I experienced my very first crush. Ah, childhood love! Growing up, I’ve always considered myself a hopeless romantic. So falling in love for the first time (or whatever a 6th grader thought they were experiencing at the time) was something incredible. My first cool hang out with this girl was at the Adventure Dome, a local amusement park at one of the resorts in Las Vegas. Our school had these straight-A field trips, and as luck would have it, I ended up hanging out with this girl and her friends. We went on roller coaster and rides together and during the excursion, I won a teddy bear at one of the carnival games. It was pretty awesome, cause I rarely won anything. But I was excited about the prospect of giving the Teddy Bear to this girl I had been admiring for awhile. The trip was fun, we took the bus back to school. I could never find the guts to give her the Teddy Bear and I ended up looking silly keeping it to myself.
You see, I was quite the introvert and shy about any interaction I had with girls in those days. I was often labeled as the sweet guy, but quite honestly nobody saw me in those days as a possible Casanova. That Teddy Bear was meant to be given to that girl that day. But I was too afraid of rejection. I worried too much about what her friends would think. Would she be embarrassed a guy like me even would even pay attention to her in that way? The thing was, she was kinda nerdy too. I may have actually had a chance had I even tried. I’ll never know how she would have reacted.
7th grade came around and I still had this mad crush on this girl. We would talk on the phone “studying” (well, I was actually really smart back then so I guess I was truly helping with tutoring…), AOL instant messaging was becoming the norm. Typical things you would think adolescent flirting to be. My middle school sold carnations every Valentine’s Day and I always sent my close girl friends carnations. When my crush got her carnation, she was too shy to ask me directly, but she had a friend ask me whether or not I liked her. I was so nervous and shy and afraid of rejection, that I ended up doing something really dumb and saying that, “I only liked her as a friend.” WHAT??? I know right?
Now many, many years later – obviously I have long gotten over this crush, but I will never forget the lessons I learned about love and being true and honest with telling people how you feel about them. There is no telling if I ended up crushing the heart of my first crush that day because of my own stupidity. The truth was, even if I did tell that girl that I liked her, I would have had no idea what that meant or how to even be a “boyfriend”. Going on dates was foreign to me. I only knew how to watch TV, study, do homework, and play video games. Again, not the skill set needed to win the hearts of teenage girls. By the 8th grade when I had the guts to tell her that I had a crush on her, it was way too late and she had become more popular and quite out of my league.
I saw my childhood crush once a few months back at my local gym. She was with another man, I’m assuming a boyfriend. I of course have zero regrets, because those heartbreaking moments in life helped me become who I am today. Those types of experiences teach you important lessons on what happens when you let opportunities slip. You never want to be living a day when you look back at a decision and wonder all of the “what ifs”. It’s too scary of a world when you stress yourself out with all of the possibilities.
Love can be a very challenging concept – especially since it seems to come and go so regularly in our society. We seem to worship the power of love in music ballads and romantic comedies just as much as we cheapen the experience of true love with skepticism from divorce rates and negative examples of relationships on TV. I used to think I was understanding of love and relationships, but you can rarely predict the results of investing so much of your time, energy, and happiness. Things change or they don’t always happen your way. Even the most loving and successful couples know that true love is something that is a blessing. It comes with time and appreciation for one another. It takes a lot of courage and strength.
Don’t hesitate. It’s always better to love and take that risk of getting hurt. You have to have a lot of courage and strength to make those moves and open your heart to somebody you care about. Since the days of my childhood crush, I’ve experienced both the heart-shattering realizations that childhood crushes don’t always work out to the heart-warming realizations that there are people out there that were able to truly make me happy and proud to be a man in love. Finding love is a process. You just have to let it happen. Being afraid isn’t worth the never knowing if you could have shared something wonderful. Also learn to take care of yourself and open your heart to the prospect of allowing love to come to you. The last thing you want is for that special someone to walk into your life and find that you were not prepared to receive them. So take a chance at love. Learn to open your heart once again.
2 Comments
Really loved this post, Paul. Made me smile.
Love finds those that are least expecting it. Never venture out in the world to find it, rather do your own thing, do you, and let love find you.