Note: These are all fake names.
Didn’t happen today, but I remember it just as well.
This happened back on May 5th, 2007, when I was in middle school. Every year, our school took 40 seventh and eighth graders to Ashland, Oregon for the annual Shakespeare Festival. We were hanging out outside the theater about half an hour before a play started, just killing time.
That’s when a classmate of mine — let’s call him Brandon— came up to me and said, “I know who likes you.”
I replied with, “Yeah, so do I,” because I had a suspicion about this girl I liked, Alyssa, and I thought she liked me too.
I ducked into the nearby gift shop for a minute, and when I came back out, Brandon dropped the name: “It’s Alyssa. Alyssa likes you.”
I was a little surprised, but honestly kind of excited. I was really shy back then and didn’t really know what to do with that information.
A little while later, Brandon came back again and said, “She asked you out and wants to know what your answer is.”
Trying to stay cool, I said, “Maybe.”
He immediately followed up with, “It’s a right-now kind of thing.”
So I said yes.
When I rejoined the group, a bunch of friends were congratulating me. Brandon came up again and said, “Go over to her — she wants to hold your hand.”
So I nervously walked over to Alyssa.
And that’s when she looked me dead in the eyes and said,
“This was all just a joke. Derek made it up. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, turned around, and walked away — trying to play it off cool while internally imploding.
At the time, I didn’t want to believe Derek (who was one of my friends) would do something like that as he knew I liked Alyssa. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Derek could’ve done it as a “prank,” or maybe because he thought it would be funny, or some other dumb middle school logic. It wasn’t justifiable, but it explained a lot.
I never confronted Derek about and, honestly, it doesn’t matter anymore. It happened over 18 years ago and I have recovered. It did shatter my confidence and self-esteem, but I absolutely despise confrontation. Never got the strength to confront him, but would still love to know why.
TL;DR Felt humiliated after my friend revealed who I liked.
Comments
I think it’s something as silly as his own insecurities. That usually explains a lot of those situations. Knocking you down to put himself higher on the totem pole.
I always felt like the purpose of telling your crush to someone was so that they could tell the person without you having to do so. Sometimes it worked and they liked you back. Sometimes it didn’t.
This happened to me in 7th grade. She got herpes in high school, in a very public way. She had it coming.