Nobody puts baillee in the corner

Writing this post is like ripping out a page from my journal and reading it in front of my entire high school, but that’s why we become writers, right? Writing is essentially choosing to not only share but willingly and repeatedly recreate the dream where you show up to class in your underwear. Get read to bare it all with me.

Some people have what I like to call a person. This person usually makes their appearance somewhere during childhood or early into high school. More than likely, this person will range from someone you never had the courage to talk with to a close friend. No matter how hard you try, you can’t help but have feelings for this person. You can’t quite explain why you’re attracted to them, but there’s some sort of spark. They can put a smile on your face and bring tears to your eyes within the same afternoon. They’ll break your heart then somehow sew the pieces back together within the same week. It’s a beautifully dangerous cycle.

High school eventually draws to a close. The same faces which surrounded you from first grade through graduation are suddenly replaced by the new and exciting faces of a small liberal college. You don’t have the luxury of spending everyday together at the lunch table. Where does your person now fit? You can always see them on weekends when you have mini reunions with your friends, but when you are one of the friends that decided to move several hours away, you quickly become confused. Should you tell your person how you feel or try to move on from these now seemingly childhood behaviors? I mean, you are now spending your weekends watching Requiem for a Dream and reading Camus, so the idea of “like liking” someone seems juvenile.

If you continue to keep your person in your life, they’ll now become background music like the mixed CD you made in high school and keep going back to. They’ll be the My Chemical Romance song added to your new playlist with a smile, secretly nestled between your new cool playlist featuring Sigur Ros and Of Montreal. It’ll be comforting to know that it (they) will pop up randomly on shuffle. No matter how many dates you go on or how hard you try not to, you’ll still smile and immediately open a text from your person only to be a little saddened when the conversation tapers out.

Life will continue to go on. You’ll keep growing and exploring, and Fall Out Boy will make more albums that speak to your left over angst and help you to embrace what makes you unique. Different people will continue to transition in and out of your life, but you can’t help but get comfort from your person. They’re someone who knows you well, but you know well enough to not depend on. Then your person might disappear out of your life for a while, but you know they’ll eventually come back, sometimes at the best time and sometimes at the worst.

Before you know it, you’re diving headfirst into adulthood. You aren’t quite sure who you are anymore. You aren’t exactly sure of anything anymore. Until this moment, your entire life has been planned. You decide to get a job and try to move on in every facet of your life with one exception: your person. Now where does your person fit?

That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I don’t know how to incorporate my person into my life. I don’t know what to do. There isn’t a neat and tidy corner in which to place them because life isn’t neat and tidy. I guess that’s what drew me to writing this piece. It isn’t my Love Actually cue card confession. It isn’t my Lloyd Dobler window moment. It isn’t even my Josie Geller Never Been Kissed letter. It’s my “I don’t know how I feel about you and have no clue where you fit into my life, so I wrote this piece” piece. You may never read this and never find anything out, or you may read this and think I’m absolutely crazy. Either way, it’s out there.

That’s why I’m encouraging you to do the same thing. When it feels right, let your person know where they stand. It’s better to go ahead and get things out in the open before it’s too late, but with that being said, wait until it feels right for you. It took years for this to feel right. I have no idea what the consequences will be, but I know I either way that I’ll feel better in the morning. Plus, I can always watch 10 Things I Hate About You for my happy ending. Life goes on, and you’ll keep getting a better and better person until you find the person and can finally let your person go. It’s like the old saying goes, it’s better to have had a person and lost [them] than to have never had a person at all.