If only your adolescent brain could understand that there was more to life than just her.

She wasn’t a graceful flower like all the others, but she held herself with a certain dignity that drew you closer. Her slender fingers were tantalizingly out of reach, so you spent the vast majority of your teenage years chasing even the idea that you could one day intertwine your pudgy fingers with her contrasting skinny ones.

If only you understood that she never thought of you two as more than acquaintances.

While you spent hours a day fantasizing about the future you and her were bound to have, her mind was elsewhere, and her heart was even further away. You were too in love to see her disinterest in you; too in love to see anything but your romance-clouded delusions. You two were barely friends; being lovers was naturally out of the question.

If only you weren’t so keen on falling deeper in love with her each time you saw her.

At first it was simply summer crush: a fling that happened only in the imaginations of unrealistic hopeless romantics, but three years later you still dreamt about her. Your face would still become tinted with a pink hue and your hands would wobble ever so slightly. The more time passed, the more reasons you found to devote yourself to her.

If only you knew how beautiful your love was.

Even though she never loved you back, I wouldn’t change a single thing about those years, because if I close my eyes tight enough and dream softly enough I occasionally catch a glimpse of the future I wish I had with her, and that is all I need to keep surviving for the rest of my life.