If high school is giggling about hallway crushes and sneaking out of the house at 2 a.m., then college should be all about adult dinner dates and sneaking out of your dorm at 3 a.m.
I wouldn’t know, though. All my love references come from the 2000s romance novels (huge Laurent Barnholdt fan here!!). I was your Miss Goody Two Shoes in high school that missed out on all the hearts and bubbles because she was nose deep in her bodice rippers and too scared to try anything in real life. Call me Lara Jean if you must.
But all of that’s going to change. “I’m going to fall in love,” I told my friends one night. It was the summer after graduation, one of our last dinner dates together in a cozy Vietnamese restaurant before scattering across the world for college. “I’m going to go to a college party, someone’s gonna spill their drink on me and the coolest girl will offer me her jacket then walk me home and kiss me goodnight.”
“We don’t believe you and that’s never going to happen,” they said in unison. No, I’m kidding, they wouldn’t do that. What they did do was nod in support and say, “You go, girl.”
It’s mid-September now, and I’m settled comfortably into college. My classes are manageable, I’ve made friends that I can laugh with and rely on, and the days that I miss my mom I call her on the phone for hours. No party girls kissing me goodnight yet, but I’m not too hung up about it. Love has taken a backseat in my mind, and, for the first time in a long time, life feels right.
“Love has taken a backseat in my mind, and, for the first time in a long time, life feels right.”
Let’s time travel to one of my classes. I always force myself to sit in front because I know I’ll be too embarrassed to fall asleep if I’m right in front of my professor, and plus, I can’t hear all that well.
He was talking about what happens to horrible people after they die in Buddhist cosmology. Angry people go to the hell realm, greedy people become hungry ghosts, and ignorant people become animals.
I was mentally noting down all my flaws and estimating where I’ll end up, BuzzFeed style, when this girl taps me on the arm and asks me something. First row, remember, so we’re huddled up close and whispering. After class, she asked for my number. Two weeks later, she asked me out.
So what do you do when this girl is someone who loves the novel that saved your life in high school? Who’s also vegan because she believes that we aren’t entitled to the bodies of animals, who still cares about the state of the world and is just so easy to talk to?
Say yes, probably. Marry her, even.
But what do you do when you just don’t…feel it?
(I’m talking about the butterflies in my stomach. The somersaults. Shame on you for never appearing at the right time.)
Attraction works in mysterious and often devastating ways. I politely told her sorry and walked away. Just because I missed out on love in high school doesn’t mean I should barrel headfirst into it in college.
“Just because I missed out on love in high school doesn’t mean I should barrel headfirst into it in college.”
Just because she seemed like someone I should be with, doesn’t mean she’s the one for me. Listen to your heart. I’m listening to mine.
I’m also listening to the void from this wide gaping hole in my body, though. What if I actually am attracted to her, and I’m just super avoidant attached? In Buddhist cosmology, I’ll be born as a squirrel with an ice cream addiction and an affinity for spiral earrings in my next life.
I guess I just have to make peace with that.
That night, I found myself much like my romcom protagonists: lying on my fluffy dorm bed, kicking my feet in a pink pajama set and calling my high school best friend.
“If our lives were TV shows,” I told her, “Then yours would be an American soap opera, and mine is a K-drama. I’m holding hands on the 7th episode. I’m kissing on the last.”
Dear love, you will be mine someday.
Just not today.