To the boy who secretly loved me before

To the boy who secretly loved me before,

First of all, thank you! What an ego booster! Who would have thought someone held a candle for me a long time ago, during my most ugly-faced period.

Secondly, I am sorry I did not know how you felt back then. You never told me. I did not read minds then. I still don't now. Was I cruel? Did I pointedly ignore you? I don't remember. Did I notice how you looked at me, or how you sweated or got tongue-tied whenever we spoke? I don't think so.

You know why? Because I was also preoccupied with thoughts of my own unrequited love towards some other boy. I was also sweating and getting tongue-tied when he was nearby.

The fun of being young and carefree got lost on us poor shy beings riddled with doubts and insecurities. We have kept those feelings to ourselves, never allowing ourselves to show them towards the very people who were supposed to know.

What was it that we were afraid of? Rejection? Perhaps. Is rejection a big deal? Now that we are older we can afford to look at it this way: what is the worst thing that could happen when we tell someone how we feel? Rejection. Duh, then we just move on to the next. 

But to a young heart rejection is a big deal only because we haven't been rejected that often yet. As we get older and as we get rejected many times over, we know that the pain diminishes over time. We have found ways to get over it quicker. We have built an arsenal of coping mechanisms to overcome negative emotions faster.

Perhaps we shouldn't have taken ourselves too seriously then. Perhaps we shouldn't have idealized certain emotions or particular people back then. Perhaps we should have just cultivated friendships that may or may not lead to something more intimate. Perhaps we should have tempered our expectations and just enjoyed being young and carefree.

On the other hand, holding emotions in may have been our saving grace from worse things such as early marriage, or early parenthood, or quitting school, or poverty, or missing incredible chances, or missing meeting better partners in life. For we know how impetus young love can be. We've seen it happen to our peers who were bolder than us.

And who's to say it could have worked between us? We might have had the worst relationship ever. We might have ended up more miserable together than apart. We might have even saved ourselves from each other.

So there is no use romanticizing those feelings that our young hearts felt just because it never came into being. They were made of daydreams and fascination about relational perfection.

We know now there is no such thing as "the one", right? That destiny is just an aggregate consequence of the many tiny and big decisions we've made all throughout our individual lives. Right? Wrong?

And what do we do with these perceived idealistic emotions now that we are older? We now have the power to make things happen, start the ball rolling, see where it gets us. But do we really want that? Are we ready to give up our status quo to find out if we were right in feeling a certain way to a certain someone and keeping it cherished in our hearts all those years? 

Are we really ready to live happily ever after? Are we ready to find out we were right all those years and feel sorry for having wasted so much time wondering? Or are we ready to be disappointed when we found out how awful it was to have nurtured these vague feelings from long ago when it turned out it just amounted to nothing?

Just like before, there are still the what ifs. Decisions decisions. And as the indecision sets in the clock just mercilessly ticks by.

Maybe we should just let these dormant emotions be and face the now and make the most of what we have at this very moment... unless we have an unpleasant now and are hoping for a better tomorrow.

I am clueless as to how I should end this letter. I guess I will just let it hang like this.

Sincerely,

The girl you secretly loved before who now knows how you used to feel