What I Learned From My Weird Relationship-Non-Relationship

Growing up, I never had a spectacular love life. As much as I watched all of the Disney Channel Original Movies and learned the choreography to High School Musical, it was to no avail. Most of my school years were spent being known as "the other asian girl in our class" or "that girl who is obsessed with band" (and not in the sexy American Pie Presents: Band Camp kind of way. Mostly I had a lot of crushes and was in a few not-quite-dating-but-definitely-not-just-friends (and often a little one-sided) type of moments, or "situationships," as we now call them.

Recently, as I've been dating as an adult, I've been thinking a lot about the awkward and sometimes regrettable high school choices I made. Maybe it's because every time I go back east, I end up running into 30 of my classmates at the grocery store, or maybe it's because I keep seeing people I know getting engaged or having kids and splashing it across Facebook. Either way, whenever I think about people who defined my younger crushes—and more importantly, how I viewed myself for a solid eight years—one person always comes to mind first.

For the sake of discretion and because I know, inevitably, someone will most likely read and share this, let's call this guy...Chuck. (I usually refer to this guy as 'Satan' whenever my friends or family bring him up, but I'm aiming to be less petty this year.)

Now, Chuck and I knew each other from when we were in elementary school. My earliest memory is from when we were paired together for a science worksheet in the third grade and we sat underneath the table everyone kept their lunch boxes on in the classroom. We made jokes and did our work, and after that, I started noticing him more and more. I think that was right before we realized as a collective whole that boys and girls weren't actually that gross and that cooties weren't actually a thing. Either way, Chuck's funny personality and good looks were enough to make me swoon.

That moment (and the entire year of having homeroom together) was enough to start a long, drawn out friendship through high school. Whenever he wasn't dating someone, there would be an influx of texts between us that would drop off right when another girl appeared in his life. Which really should have been warning sign number one.

Whenever we'd have class together, we'd talk, but there was always some sort of obstacle in the way and it was clear to like, everyone around me, that if he actually cared, he would've just taken it past hallway flirting in the first place.

X definitely correlated with Y in this instance, and honestly, if I could go back to high school me, I'd literally pour some cold water on her and tell her to chill out.

We continued this whole weird talking/not talking kind of thing for a long time, even as we went our separate ways after high school. We'd still talk all the time, but there was never a ton of plot exposition past "I miss you" texts.

That was, until one particular night in between my freshman and sophomore year of college.

We hadn’t talked in three months because of a fight we'd had over FaceTime on my birthday. From March to June, there was definitely a disconnect. When I moved back home for the summer, I really didn't have any intention of seeking him out and thought I was over it.

Thought.

Somehow, we had ended up Snapchatting, which eventually led to texting. He asked if I would come over because he needed to talk to me and I said no, not wanting to sneak out because it was already almost 1 AM. I probably should have taken a cue from How I Met Your Mother when they did that whole speech about how nothing good happens after 2 AM.

So, relentlessly, he asked if he could come to me. Not knowing what was going to happen, I said yes. I remember sneaking through my kitchen and listening before I opened the creaky back door at my parents' house and then quickly shutting it.

Before I knew it, I saw him coming around the corner in what seemed like a scene from an 80s romantic comedy. At that point, I was mentally equating it to the scene where Jake Ryan shows up outside the church in Sixteen Candles.

He got out of his car and walked up my driveway as a full moon was shining brightly. He came up and gave me a hug before saying sorry for everything; the FaceTime, the games, and the seven page long text message he sent me saying that I was a horrible person.

It felt so simple, so easy to forgive and forget, and we were talking on my porch in no time. Then, all of a sudden, everything shifted.

After like, six years, he finally made the move I had been waiting for. He had the worst intro line of all time when he asked if the guys at school were good kissers, and then slowly changing the conversation to ask me if I was a good kisser, too.

"I've always been curious," he said.

So, like any early 2000s romantic comedy, we kissed. What followed is still something that makes me laugh to this day.

The guy I'd hyped up for the majority of my teenage years was actually a frog instead of a prince.

On paper, the situation was perfect; moonlight, an old crush, middle of the night kind of excitement. But in all reality, he tasted like Dos Equis and actually wasn't a good kisser at all.

He tried to get me to let him inside my house so we could continue "talking" and when he did, I sent him home. I went to bed that night, laughing at how ridiculous it had all been.

I know a lot of people say that it takes one really wild event to make all of the past make sense, but seriously, it really happened to me. The next morning, I woke up from what felt like it had been a crazy dream only to understand that, in the span of three hours, I had realized that this weird, idealistic vision I had of what it would be like to date Chuck was never even a possibility and was the farthest thing from becoming a reality. I pictured him as smooth, funny, and collected, when in all actuality, he was just as much of a mess as I was (or what I thought I was).

After laughing for a solid eternity, I was more so pissed at myself.

For years I had let this shivering Chihuahua of a man shape the way that I looked at myself. Ignoring my best friends when they said I should get over it because he actually wasn't that great to begin with, I had put him on a pedestal that was grossly over exaggerated.

It's been almost five years since all of that happened and, while I feel like my story isn't unique in any way, that that a lot of people share the same high school crush stories, I do know that the whole exchange changed me deeply. I learned to trust myself more, to think higher of myself, and to view people more honestly than what I *thought* they were like in my own perfect dream world in my head.

Also, I now hate Dos Equis.