Читать книгу The Seven Year-Old Pilot - Capt. Steven Archille - Страница 21

It was Spring of my senior year, and Jennifer (the girl I had been secretly in love with for four years) and I had become very close friends. However, she seemed oblivious to my true feelings for her. Whenever she smiled or talked to me, I was totally lost in the moment. I wanted so desperately to tell her how I felt but since I dreaded the thought of rejection, I had continued to settle for just her friendship. But as the saying goes “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Faced with the impending end of high school and with Jennifer going to a different university than me, I finally decided that I would tell her how I had felt all these years. As fate would have it, Miss. Kirsch assigned Jennifer and me to a special project, which meant I would finally be spending time alone with her. The few weeks that the project lasted were some of the best memories I have of high school. Jennifer and I talked, joked, and got to know each other more than ever before. You would think that I could have mustered up the courage just to let it out, and I tried on more than one occasion, but the sound of my heart beating in my ears from fear always stopped me. Then it came to me; I had always been able to express myself on paper, so I decided to write her a love letter.

I sat down that night with pen and paper and started to pour out all the feelings for her that I had held inside onto that page. I told her how beautiful I thought she was and how much I admired her warm personality and her intelligence. I told her how I had sat silently all those years wishing I could tell her how I felt, while dreaming she felt the same way. I told her of all the times I had tried to express my feelings but had stopped out of fear of rejection. I finished the letter by telling her that I didn’t expect her to feel the same in return but that I just HAD to tell her before we parted ways since I might never see her again. After I finished the letter, I folded it neatly, placed it in a sealed envelope, and decided I would hand it to her first thing the next morning.

When I saw her the next day, my heart started thumping more than ever... this was it... but I chickened out. We had a class together during the last period of the day, and I told myself that I would put off giving it to her until then so that I could quickly make my escape after handing it to her. When the last bell of the day rang and as everyone started heading home, I walked up to her with my heart pounding and handed her the letter. “I have something for you, Jen,” I said, as she took the letter. Then I turned and walked away without another word, dreading her reaction the next day.

The next morning, during our first class together, I tried my best to avoid her. I felt vulnerable and exposed now that she knew how I felt about her. I sat down at my desk, and she sat down at her desk behind me. I heard her call my name. “Steve”, she said, “I read your letter”. When it comes to matters of the heart, many of our behaviors often don’t make any sense. I would like to tell you that when I heard her call me, I turned around, looked into her eyes, and our love affair began. I would like to tell you that she confessed that she had felt the same all these years and that she too had been afraid to speak up. Yes, I would like to tell you all of that… but that’s not how it went.

When I heard her call my name, I froze with a sick feeling of dread about what she might say. I sat there unable to talk and unable to turn around to hear what she had to say. I have come to learn that in life, we don’t regret trying; we regret not trying. The things we try, whether or not they turn out right, we always learn from, but the things we don’t try, we never get to find out if they would have worked out or not. I was paralyzed by an inexplicable fear, and didn’t turn around. For years, I regretted not turning around because I never got to hear what she was going to tell me. I felt as if I’d made a big mistake. However, as the years went by and I learned more about life and love, I realized that there really are no mistakes in life, only lessons. As for Jennifer and I, after a few awkward days of me avoiding her and smiling shyly at her as she passed by, she finally approached me one day and sat down at the desk beside me, smiled, and simply put her hand on top of mine. We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled without saying a word. Silence can speak volumes. After that, during our last few weeks of high school, we went back to our routine of talking and joking and being good friends and neither one of us ever mentioned the letter. We graduated, and I never saw or spoke to her again, but I knew that she knew that she was my first love, and for me, that was enough.