Hello beautiful people!…or person, or nobody….
Maybe I should just start of saying “Hello world?” I don’t know, I’m just going with it. I’m not a professional blog runner, so I feel like its okay.
I would like to preface with an apology for all the typos. I have noticed that I sometimes add extra letters that are not supposed to go there, such as saying “Rose went to school a country over” instead of “county over.” So if there is even one person reading this, I am very sorry. I try to edit, but it can be kind of hard to check your own work, especially when you’re an idiot like me and decide to write a post when you can’t sleep at four o’clock in the morning.
Moving on!
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I remember the day that I met Bryan so clearly. It was the first day of third grade, and I was nervous as crap. I had just switched to my new elementary school a semester before, and none of the people from my second grade class were in my third grade class. Walking in and seeing nobody that I knew made me want to turn around and bolt from the room in tears.
When I went to sit down at the seat with my name on it, I was placed next to a pretty girl with black hair and glasses (one of the only other two people who wore glasses besides me), and across from two blonde boys. One of them was Bryan, who held out his hand and introduced himself.
“I’m Bryan,” he said kindly.
“I’m Lily,” I replied. I remember looking down because I was shy, but when I looked back up, his blue eyes were locked on mine. He brushed his shaggy blonde hair from his eyes and smiled again.
“I like your pink bow,” he informed me, then blushed deeply. The girl next to me giggled and the other boy didn’t pay attention, but Bryan was looking at me so sincerely that I remember feeling a sense of belonging. He wanted to be my friend and he complimented me, and from that moment, I was gone.
For the next three years, we were strange friends. It was fine in third grade, when we just kind of hung out during class. In fourth grade, however, we started a strange sort of banter that drove our teacher insane. She separated us in class, but we continued to argue from across the room, frequently getting in trouble. I have never understood how he has the amazing ability to make me more infuriated than I ever have been. Literally nobody in the world can push my buttons like he can.
It’s seriously a talent. Instead of pushing a big red button, he just sits on it and pushes all the little ones around it until I lose my mind.
In fifth grade, we were in different classes, but got to hang out in an accelerated program for gifted and talented students. Once a week, we were pulled from our classes to spend time developing our literary and mathematical skills to a more advanced level than the other students in our class. There, we got to argue, but it was about books and stories and the teacher in that classroom encouraged us. We were good friends, and I loved him—at that point, it wasn’t romantically. I just loved him as another human in general that I connected to.
On Valentine’s Day in fifth grade, I came back from lunch to find a red teddy bear sitting on my desk. It was about the size of my torso, dark red, and held a red heart with gold lettering that simply said “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Tucked into it was a fake red rose, which played a little bit of music. I literally stopped in my tracks and stared at it as everyone “oooed” at me for having a teddy bear on my desk.
In fifth grade.
Was there a note?
Of course not.
Most likely, everyone knew that it was Bryan. It wasn’t a secret that he liked me, but I refused to accept that. We were friends. That was it. Nobody else seemed to be able to let go of it for the rest of fifth grade. After the teddy bear, things were a little weird for us. People publically teased him about me, to the point of us both having our heads down in our gifted and talented program because if we even looked at each other, someone said something.
We attended the same Gifted and Talented middle school program. Because it was a selection of students from all over our towns with good grades and a talent in some form of the arts, we basically got a whole new group of people. The teasing about me and Bryan disappeared over summer, and we were able to just be best friends again. My closest friends still teased me of course, but other than, it was water under the bridge.
At some point, I realized that my mushy feelings for him weren’t the same as they were for my other friends, and came to the realization that I actually did like him. Of course, the second I told my friend Amanda, she definitely had to tell Bryan that I liked him, but I couldn’t date because Daddy said no boyfriends until I was thirteen. Somehow, a bunch of other people found out and the teasing started up again.
All of this happened between our first class of the day and lunch.
I was so mortified by all the teasing by the popular boys (yes, I know, it’s silly that it was even a thing in middle school, but these are a bunch of theatre kids; obviously, there is a hierarchy). I ended up telling Amanda that I changed my mind because my dad said no boyfriends, so I decided not to like anybody. In some weird way, it worked. The teasing stopped.
Then sometime in about April of sixth grade, Amanda told me that she knew I still liked Bryan. She told her that he probably hated me now and to just forget about it, but she was determined to get us together. One day, unknown by me, Amanda called Bryan and told him I like him. He didn’t believe it because of last time, so she told him to stay completely quiet and added me on the call. When I picked up, she asked me if I liked him.
“Would you date him if he asked?” she pressed eagerly.
I remember asking my mom if I could have a boyfriend, and she asked who it was. When I said Bryan, she said “Of course you can date him.”
(Our parents knew each other, his mom adored me, and my mom worked at our elementary school at the time, and so she knew him pretty well…the families were totally cool with it).
I then told Amanda that yes, I would date him because my parents said it was okay. That was when said, “Did you here that, Bryan?”
I was so mad, I yelled at her right then. She calmed me down and said “Okay, so I’m gonna hang up. Bryan, do not hang up. You can do this.”
She basically forced him to ask me out.
And he did when she hung up. His kind voice came over the phone and he asked me if I would be his girlfriend because he really liked me. Naturally, I said yes, and there it was. My first boyfriend.
Fast forward eight months, and I’m getting dumped. The reason? He was part of the popular crowd, and pretty close to being finalized in it for the rest of middle school. I, however, was on the absolute opposite part of the spectrum and was part of the misfit crowd. It didn’t seem like it mattered at the time, but next thing I know, I can’t even look at the boy I have to spend the rest of seventh grade sitting next to.
After that, we didn’t talk at all. We weren’t friends, and everything was horribly awkward. I was still excruciatingly in love with him (I know, I didn’t know what love was, but it felt like that at the time). Consistently, I was teased for the fact that Bryan didn’t like me but I was head over heels for him. He pined after me for three years from third grade to sixth, and I pined after him from seventh until eleventh. Even though I dated someone else and even had a serious relationship with Paul, I was always coming back to my feelings for him. I didn’t know him anymore, but I longed for the kind of connection we had, the way I felt my sense of belonging with him.
When he came to my church in eleventh grade, he was shocked to see me there. He hugged me, said it was great to see me, and then fell head over heels for one of my closest friends, Adelaide. She and I had only recently reconnected in tenth grade, but it crushed me that he looked right past me and wanted her so badly, he spent three months getting her to like him in any way he could. He loved her so much, and she didn’t feel that way about him. I watched them grow closer and date, all while he and I grew vloser as well. We reconnected in friendship, and by the time Adelaide dumped him in November of our senior year, we were best friends again. Rose and Jenny were still my top girls, but we were best friends, and I silently fell in love with him again.
I blatantly denied it if anyone asked, claiming I still wanted John. Part of me did like John and his funny personality that made me enjoy being around him, but there was just something about Bryan that I felt like I couldn’t control. I knew him better than anyone, and he knew me almost as well as Rose. At that time, he may have even known me better. He was always so non-judging about everything that he knew my most embarrassing wants and desires. I trusted him because he was good at keeping secrets, and I didn’t think he looked down on me for any of my faults.
The thing about Bryan; he is bipolar, he’s passionate and intense, and he’s very good at connecting with people. He’s that guy from the movies that everyone says you shouldn’t be with, but you don’t care because he makes you feel special. I’ve always been a heavy set girl, and insecurities flow naturally with me. Bryan made me feel so much better about myself physically. He assured me that I was beautiful, he really did think I was. After he and Adelaide broke up, he began complimenting me in small ways, telling me my hair looked nice a particular way or that he really liked the way I looked in a certain dress.
I ate that crap up.
And it got me into soooooo much trouble.
Until next time lovelies.
Lily May xoxo
The Life of Lily May 