I remember sitting at my desk one morning in English class, staring out the window at a sunlit yard with birds flittering about. I was a junior in a high school that was too overpopulated with all kinds of people. Out of those two thousand students, there was one person that swayed back and forth in my head all day. It was not until the spring of Junior year, in that morning of my English class, that I felt a strong urge to finally spill my feelings through a letter. 

He was a Senior, and an average person whom I’ve never even spoken to before, but that ordinariness covering up the mystery of this stranger was something I was attracted to. Observing him and his ordinariness, his awkwardness float throughout the school’s brightly lit hallways made me feel like I had a chance because I was equally the same. I occupied an orchestra class with him. He wasn’t interested in the cello it seemed, but he was very interested in the guitar. The night I found out his passion for the guitar was the day I no longer questioned if my feelings were simple and fake. I was part of a Mariachi Club that was invited to perform at the school’s Songwriter’s Showcase. The night of the performance, after playing the giddy tunes of “Los Laureles” and a Mariachi cover of “Reptilia” by The Strokes,  I decided to stay and watch the rest of the show in order not to lose the momentum of joy and adrenaline from our performance. I clapped and cried, I swayed with the audience and shouted. Then, I was met with a familiar figure and a passionate performance. His ordinariness was no longer present and my heart skipped a beat. Was this the feeling of love?

My feelings for him became more complex after that. There were days I felt joy seeing him in class, and days I would feel upset as I watched him interact with other friends, especially girls. And as the days passed, the more I thought about this new side of him I saw that night. It was so well hidden underneath this ordinariness that blended with the crowded hallways of the school building. 

Then that one spring morning of English class came, and my strong sense to write took over my pen and notebook. I wrote a rough draft of a letter about all the complex feelings I felt, about the night I first saw him perform, and about the admiration I’ve felt days and months after. Later that day I talked to my friends about the letter, I talked to my sister, and then I contemplated by myself. Was writing a letter and giving it to him the right thing to do? He’s only seen fragments of me, and even I only saw fragments of him. Nevertheless, time was running out. He was graduating in 2 months.

A month later, I began carrying my revised love letter, stuffed in a secure pocket of my backpack. When the timing felt right, I would go up to give it to him, and then run away. I repeated this scene over and over in my head. Would it go the way I planned? 

There were many days where opportunities would rise, and I would question God, fate, the universe, if this was my chance. My fear would always take over, and the note I would tightly hold within my hand for one minute, went back into my pocket the next. Then the last day of school came. I was on my way to leave the building when I saw him coming out of a passageway to my right. We were the only ones in this wide open space. Everyone else was gone. My last opportunity presented itself to me and I only had ten seconds to achieve what I had been contemplating for weeks. My mind raced, my heart raced, and my hands suddenly became cold. His side profile was in plain view, and his tall demeanor almost seemed to loom over me despite being 5 feet away. He didn’t seem to notice me yet, so I took a deep breath and asked myself again if what I was planning on doing was right, whether it was meant to be, whether I even had a chance in the first place.

I sighed a breath of defeat when I ultimately decided not to give him my letter. 5 feet became 10 feet, his back turned towards me, and his body entered a new strip of hallway. The spotlight I once saw of him that one passionate night on stage was quite different from the daytime of this solitary and melancholic moment. I walked up towards the start of this empty, white hallway. It felt like a scene from a movie: my defeated self, standing all alone in the huge empty space we were both once within. I watched him continue on this slim strip of hallway, hoping that at least the feelings in my heart would somehow telepathically reach him. He disappeared, and with that my last chance to go after him also. As time passed, I realized how naïve and seemingly impulsive I was to even think of writing and giving a strange, perhaps overwhelming, love letter to him. I sort of laugh thinking about it now. I came to terms with the result of my choice pretty quickly, but sometimes I still wonder what other story I would have had if I had given that letter to him.