It’s an amazing thing that the human brain can make someone believe themselves to be in love, and with someone that they have never really met before. Unfortunately this has happened to me a little too often. It’s astonishing, too, that falling in legitimate love can happen with someone you’d never expect. Fortunately, this has happened to me only once.

My most painful experience of believing to be in love with someone had occurred relatively recently. I had liked a boy for three years and had been riding an emotional rollercoaster since the day it began. I knew that he knew I existed…but really there was nothing else. So I started to imagine what he was like based off of what I heard about him (and, of course, I disregarded all of the negative “rumors” about him that were consistently thrown at me). I created this perfect idea of what he was, and, not until the beginning of this year, did I realize that he was almost the exact opposite of what I had come to believe.

In all honesty, I had talked to him about five times in those three years, all of which were very short conversations that were ended abruptly by him. I believed that every conversation I had with him had been magical and that each time we talked he started to fall deeper and deeper into love with me. I was painfully mistaken.

I had collected every ounce of my courage to ask him to (yikes!) prom. I had this brilliant idea to make him a cupcake that looked like a tennis ball (since we had both officially met during tennis practice) that said “Prom?” on it instead of the usual “Penn”. I brought it to school with me the next day in a little white teacup so it wouldn’t dry out or the frosting wouldn’t melt. At the very end of the day, in my AP Statistics class, I asked my teacher if I could go put it on the hood of his car. She said yes, smiling, and wished me luck. My friend ran with me there, for moral support, and to make sure I actually followed through with it. It took me about ten minutes to FINALLY just place it on his car and write a note. But once I did, my friend and I ran away screaming in joy. We just knew that he had to say yes!!

He texted me the next night. He couldn’t even bother to call. He claimed to have had plans already scheduled on that day because he hadn’t been expecting to go to prom. “Your cupcake was really creative, though,” he said, “take care?.” I cried myself to sleep, as cheesy as that may sound.

I told one of my good friends, who happened to be dating one of his best friends, about what he said. She looked solemn and said that his so-called plans were playing Pokémon at his friend’s house and smoking marijuana. And suddenly, I realized that everything I had once believed him to be was all a lie. He was not the kind of guy I wanted in my life, and I had wasted so much energy believing that he was my “soul-mate”. I was stupid, but he was just downright cold.

I threw myself an ongoing pity party for a few days. I had to still go to work, though, and since I work at a grocery store with the public, I had to act very cheery all the time. In a sense, I guess it did make me feel a little better. I am friends with nearly all of the other employees, also, which definitely helped. In the process of recovering from my “broken heart”, I grew closer and closer to a guy that I work with. We’re two years apart, so it was easy to become close friends with him. He had just recently graduated high school, so he understood all of the drama, as well. But I never expected to like him. We were just friends. ..obviously.

But one night, when the store was practically empty and we were two of the five employees left, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. And I felt that rush. But this time, it was different. I knew this boy, and we were actually close. I felt comfortable talking to him and being with him. And from that day on, I started to realize that everything I had previously imagined my almost-prom-date to be like was exactly what my co-worker actually is.

Now, I just have to gather all of my courage and let him know.