You got me.
I've never gotten over her. Sometimes I lie awake at night, just thinking about her. It's not healthy, that's for sure, but I'm already a wreck. There was one other girl, who I thought was nice and who seemed interested and asked me out, but I turned her down because I couldn't get over it.
My high school crush was named Lisa. I met her in kindergarten, but didn't really know her well back in the early years of elementary school. Even though we went to a small school in the middle of nowhere, where everybody knew everybody, she was the athletic and popular girl, while I was the shy and awkward kid who was frequently bullied and I was usually reading my books instead of making friends. I crushed on a bunch of girls over the years, but I was mostly just the "weird admirer", and my longest standing crush bullied me for years.
Eventually I actually got to know Lisa better, and realized that we did have a lot in common. I've forgotten most of that by know, but one random conversation about books is still at the back of my mind. It was about some dumb plot twist in a book we were both reading or something. I can't remember at all, but I think that was when I started liking her.
When I like someone though, I'm stupidly, embarrassingly desperate. I practically begged Lisa to dance with me at our Grade Eight graduation. She agreed, although there was probably some pity involved on her part. I wanted to remember that moment forever, just the two of us dancing, but I can't. I don't remember the song, or the feeling of holding her, or anything. I remember how I tripped over myself asking her, but that's about it.
Over the summer, she got a boyfriend. Some basketball player who was a year or two older than her. I was stupid and jealous and I wanted to hate him, but I didn't even know who he was, so I just assumed some random guy I saw walking around the high school was him, and felt a bit angry whenever I saw him. It wasn't even him, though. I was still kind of her friend though, but I was too stupidly jealous, and really wanted her to like me instead of liking that guy. I didn't actually do or say anything because of those feelings, and I would really regret it if I had, but I didn't appreciate just being her friend, like I should have.
In Grade 11, I barely saw her. We had no classes together, and due in equal parts to me living out in the country, my awkwardness, and a somewhat overprotective mother, I had no social life outside of school. I recall one time talking with Lisa for a few minutes and saying that I hoped we had classes together in Grade 12, because she was my friend.
At the end of July that summer, she was killed in a car accident. Some people needed to get home at her father's birthday party, but they had been drinking, so she drove them. On the way back, well....it was dark, and she had been drinking as well. She crashed the car in the ditch, and they found her there in the morning.
I blamed myself. It doesn't make sense, but I wanted to believe that I could have somehow, impossibly, done something to save her, to make sure that she didn't get in that car. I couldn't have known, and I wasn't even there, but that doesn't stop my mind.
It's been over three years, but I still haven't gotten over her. If she was alive and interested.....I don't know. She deserves someone who isn't a total failure, and that's not me.
She's dead, and that's final, but sometimes I just wish that I could remember that night when I held her. I just wish I could remember dancing with her.