All the old times come rushing back.

Been reading those "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul" books before I go to bed (so sue me ... I have two that I got in jr high, and I've been bored =P). They actually just made me remember all over again all the heartbreak I've been through over the last few years of my life, probably because I used to read those when I was younger and I felt bad over stupid boys. I dunno. There has been a whole lot of heartbreak over the years.

1. First big crush: James. A guy in my rec tennis class. It was almost your stereotypical junior high crush (I was in seventh grade at the time): Older (he was an eighth-grader), distant, cool, exotic (his parents were Chinese, I think), best player in the class ... whatever. He was also a jerk to my friends and, later, to me, although that was in a more roundabout way. Broke my heart. I cried over him all summer and a little bit into the next year, because I still saw him every now and then at school. Man ... I was so obsessed with him. In retrospect I can't blame him for freaking out. It was probably pretty creepy. =P Junior high kids don't handle crushes very well; they verge on obsession. Oops.

2. Next big crush: Paul, part 1--I think. I think this happened at the beginning of the 8th grade year. I had a crush on Lyka's older brother because he would kind of hang out with us whenever I was over. Once again, older, exotic, distant ... best friend's older brother. =P You know. I was obsessed for a while, but then it was replaced by--

3. Michael. Poor boy, I probably scared the crap out of him when he found out I had a crush on him, because it was so out of the blue. It was the first time that I'd liked someone my own age. I thought he was the shiz because he was a smart kid like me, although in retrospect, we are completely different people now. I can say that because I got over him by about that summer, we both still went to the same school, we eventually just became friends/acquaintances again ... as a matter of fact, one day after a Calculus test senior year, I forgot that I needed a ride home after 5th period, and all my friends left me when I was finishing my test. So I went and stood in the atrium at the front of the school and wondered what I was going to do. Turns out another one of the girls in Calculus needed a ride home, so we were commiserating for a while, and then Michael came out (he'd finished after us) and I was like, "Heeeey, Michael ... wanna give me a ride home?" =P In that way that I've done to all my friends at some point or another; I definitely didn't like him anymore at this point. He, being a nice guy, took me and the other girl home. That definitely cemented his position on the "one of the genuinely good people at Wylie" list. When I got home, I called Lyka, because I thought it was funny how I would've killed for such an opportunity in 8th grade, but now I was just like, Oh, yeah, Michael's a good kid. Funny how things work out. =P

4. Paul, part 2. I started liking Paul again when we actually got to high school, because once again, he would come over and talk to us at football games and stuff. Wasn't hard for all the old emotion to come rushing back, especially for a hormonal fifteen-year-old. But then I found out that he already had a crush on someone his own age, and I was crushed. Got over it, yeah, but not without writing depressing unrequited-love poetry first.

5. David. Ah, David. I think that I had a tiny crush on him much longer than I would've admitted, but I knew that he used to have a crush on a girl his own age earlier in the year, so I didn't think I even had a chance. Then he started walking with me around school when he didn't have to, and we were both in the same band (SkaSkank Redemption), and after the FCA Talent Show he gave me a ride over to Taco Bueno, where we met up with the rest of the band. Then he paid for my dinner. That should've been clue enough right there, but I decided that he was just being nice and that I didn't actually like him, at which point Lyka promptly replied that I was in denial. "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt, Emily!" I heard that so much over the next couple of days. And then on Wednesday he asked me out. =P I guess she was right.

I'm not gonna lie, I floated all the way home. And at church that night. And for the next two months. And then he started doing badly in PreCal, so his parents grounded him--for two weeks, or until he brought his grades up. We never really talked on the phone, just at/after school, and because he was grounded he wasn't allowed to drive me home for two weeks, as I recall--so I pretty much didn't hear from him for two weeks. And then, the first day that he took me home again after all that time, he took the short way home (he usually took the longer way to have more time together)--I should've known then that something was up. He'd seemed kind of distant and worried. Whenever we got to my house, Alyssa went inside and as I was getting my stuff out of the trunk he was like, "Emily, I have something to tell you ... while we were apart, my feelings for you changed." That's all I remember, and I still remember that part word-for-word--"my feelings for you changed." I started sobbing the wail of the brokenhearted, uncontrollably, and sat down in my driveway. Then I threw up (I have a tendency to do that when I'm extremely nervous/scared/upset/what have you). David went inside and got my dad--I'll give him that much; the boy wasn't an asshole--who picked me up and got my stuff and helped me inside. And I just cried into his arms for I don't know how long.

Alyssa had a softball game that night. I went for a while, feeling--and I'm not being dramatic--completely numb. I don't remember much except that my mom took me home about halfway through because I was having such a hard time not crying. I barely ate dinner that night. I don't know how I slept. I probably cried myself to sleep; I don't remember. The next day wasn't much better.

And every time I saw him at school--and at band practice--it just drove another stake deeper into my heart. I was convinced that I was too afraid of getting hurt again to ever like somebody else, because at that point it didn't seem like I could ever like someone else.

But gradually I moved on. We became friends again, even if a large part of me still liked him, and I think because I was so determined to be friends we did become just that. It wasn't until a full year later that I realized I didn't have a crush on him anymore, and I really was just friends. He's still a cool guy. At this point the months and years I have known him as a friend far outweighs any time I have known him as a boyfriend, so we're cool. I guess this story ends kind of happily after all. But spring of sophomore year led to--

6. Andrew, Sam, and Kyle (not Kyle Perkins). Andrew was the boy I met at, of all places, the Justo Lamas concert (a Spanish class field trip) in San Angelo and who asked me for my number. We had the same area code, so we'd talk on the phone for a while off and on ... he called out of the blue a couple of years ago on the fourth of July, and we talked for a while, but at that point I didn't really have a crush on him anymore. Sam was (and is) trombone player for a ska band in the Metroplex. He's a year older than me. I met him at the Catch 22 show at the Door in April of 2005. He protected me from the mosh pit (should've known then what was coming). At the end of the night there was an exchange of phone numbers, and we started talking, mostly online but sometimes on the phone, just about every day. I had a stubborn crush on him that persisted until I realized that I liked him more for the attention he was giving me than for him as a person ... but I didn't realize that until at least the end of that summer, probably later. It caused me a lot of grief in the meantime. Finally, Kyle is someone you probably know. I liked him for about two weeks after we played a show that he set up at ColdStone. There was definitely some flirting going on that night. Actually, make that a lot of flirting. I thought he was so exotic and punk rock and ... man. He also got his last girlfriend pregnant (or so she claimed). Oops. Kind of glad that didn't go anywhere. It's funny though, because the crush burned out quickly and we were just friends, and we still are. He's always come up to me at shows and said what's up and given me a hug, long after any intrigue on either of our parts faded away. It was muchly appreciated.

7. I think I went without really liking someone until spring of junior year--then it was Randall. I realized at State UIL that I had a really big crush on him. Nothing ever came of it, though, and it faded out of the picture by about halfway through summer.

8. Gustav. Oh, Gustav. I almost forgot about him.

His real name was David. He was from North Carolina. I met him on the WorldChangers mission trip in Louisiana and was convinced that it was destiny or something because he was the only person outside of my family who I have ever met who ran up to people he didn't know and shouted "Caaaaaw!" at them. He was so strange. I thought it was fantastic. He kind of got adopted into our crew of ten kids from our church, and he ended up hanging out with us a lot over the course of the week. On the last night, he was hanging out with a group of us from Wylie, and we were hiding from the Curfew Gestapo behind our building ... and we didn't get caught! It was awesome. But after that he left. We still talked on MySpace for a while, but gradually we both moved on--him faster than me, apparently, because by December he had a girlfriend in North Carolina. I can't blame him; it never would've worked. I wasn't crushed, but it still hurt. But then--

In January I e-mailed Aaron back and forth a few times ... and I'd always had kind of a crush on him, because, once again, he was foreign and exotic and punk rock and extremely cute (okay, freakin hot, but that's beside the point =P). I know for a fact that there was one show where I was pretty much the only girl, and I was standing down front with all the boys, and they all threw their arms around each other's shoulders ... and Aaron threw his around mine. :D! I did a dance of joy in my head. And the rest of that show I kept falling down so he would pick me up. Oh, tee hee. Tee hee hee hee ... hee. =)

At the end of February we started e-mailing each other every day, and I realized that I definitely had a crush on him (it happened when Philip said "You know, if he e-mails you that much, he probably has a crush on you," and I went, "sooo?"--in that 'heck yes!' voice). The intrigue grew from there, until ... you all know the rest of that story. ;)

I thought I was in love a thousand times before--tragic, unrequited, incredibly romantic to my fifteen-year-old-mind love. But fact of the matter is that every day I find out another shade to it. Love, as I have been discovering, isn't being obsessed with somebody--it's ... a lot more than that. I couldn't explain it.

You know, and this is going to sound incredibly cheesy--all those times before I was looking for love. One day I told God that I would let him send someone my way and stop worrying about it. Well, I didn't actually stop worrying about it--actively trying to find a crush--until my senior year, and then ... love found me. And I never could've called it. =) Not in a thousand years.