I remember the first time I saw her. She was beautiful, and definitely was the type of a girl I could get used to looking at. Perfect height, perfect body type, natural curly hair that she sometimes wore in an Afro. She was basically everything I had wanted physically in a woman.

As I got to know her I became weaker and weaker, she was apparently a perfect mental fit. She was smart, and challenged my opinions when she thought I was wrong, which was unlike other girls I’d talked to.As I got to know her more, I inevitably started liking her more. Instead of drawing back when I saw it coming, I played with fire. I thought I could walk through the flames and emerge on the other side the same person. Boy was I wrong.

We were friends for four months, and we had come to hang out on a daily basis. We talked about family, our travels, and abstract topics. She could make anything sound interesting. She stimulated me intellectually and I did not mind looking at her face too much. I knew I was falling deeper and deeper into the hole. Where no man wants to go, I seemed glad to walk toward. How could I break my fall when she had so suddenly swept me off my feet? My nights were getting more and more sleepless, as I spent more and more of my energy ruminating on the pointless “what-ifs” or the pointless “I could’ve done”s. When the weight became too much I decided that I would tell her. I would tell her how I felt, I would free myself of this burden. I knew the outcome was not going to be in my favor,but blinded by my fantasies of “us”, I continued.

I felt this was the time, as I could no longer bear being angry at myself. We were outside, and during a lull in conversation, the elephant in the room laughed. To shut him up, I started,
“So umm, so like umm.. how did you like umm, find out that like I umm”, I stumbled,
“Go on, speak”,she encouraged.
“Well I was like saying, umm basically,like How did you find out I liked you?”
I had done it. I had shot the elephant in the room in his brain. Now I just had to let the bastard die.
“Oh, I knew, I’ve known for a while”, she said,
“Look I-”, I continued, I was on roll.
The bell rang, this was now or never , I had to speak, it was MY time to speak.
She started talking before I did, “Look umm- if you want ,like an answer umm I guess, like I don’t really like you like THAT”.

Bruised, ego and all, I walked away. Friendzoned! There it was, rejection, what I feared most but knew was bound to happen. The elephant wasn’t dead. The bastard was definitely alive and he was bigger than ever. My brain froze. It’s all his fault. It knew she just wanted to be a friend of mine. Scumbag brain. But the winner in me felt I still had a chance to save the day, like this was all a mistake, I stumbled again:
“ Look , I under-, sorry I-”
“What?”, she said, getting impatient.
“I’m saying that I understand and-”, I continued,
“I really can’t hear you!”,she interrupted.
The stairwell was filled with students trying to get to their classes at this point, and it had become hard to hear each other.
“Look I’m going to class, bye”, I said, saving myself from public embarrassment. I continued to french class, talking to myself, depressed, angry, relieved, feeling everything at once. I sat down and started crying. No tears came, just some crying sounds and a lot of sniffing. When I finished my crying I raised my hand,and asked the teacher if I could “Please go to the nurse’s office?”, hoping she could cure a broken heart. I walked around the hallways,hopeless, depressed, rejected. The bell rang,and I went home, depressed as ever. I still tried to save or friendship, or whatever was left of it. I messaged her two days after the incident.
This is how it went:
Me: Ashley?
Her: Yannick?
Me:Remember how I said I never got to finish?( I felt too weird to finish today, now I can make my point clearly and finish) can I finish?(Not having to do with the country or the language)*wisecrack I made to make it less awkward*
Her:Ok go ahead & finish
Me:Okay, basically I had a plan in my mind okay. I knew all along you knew and that you wanted to be friends. Cool. I was just going to say it because I did not like the fact that people made such a big deal out of it, it was awkward. But since I
Her:Ok that's it? *interrupts me but I just “keep going and never look back”*
Me:(continues sentence)Knew you wanted to be friends, I had gotten used to the idea of being friends and I had stopped liking you-ish. My plan was to downplay the whole event by saying that I did want to be friends and I didn't want to mess up our friendship and I was "sorry"But! when you said the "if you want an answer" thing it f****d up my plan bc then it seemed like I was planning to ACT upon the fact that I liked you, and you were das- I can't explain it as well as I explained to myself last night. But I hope you're not mad at me, are you?
Her:No but can you just stop liking me? It makes things really awkward.
Me:Lmao yes, I did/can "just stop liking" you, that's what I was trying to say but I couldn't find the words.

We re-became friends, and I lost interest. I had never experienced rejection, but one thing for sure, it’s definitely not a confidence booster. I felt as if I had reached for the impossible but what can you say, sometimes a guy just wants the impossible.