Unrequited Love?

This picture is associated with the Charlie Brown quote 'Nothing spoils the taste of peanut butter quite like unrequited love'.

All this talk about songs on my i-pod has gotten me thinking. Anon nicely brought up the song "As I Lay Me Down" by Sophie B. Hawkins, which reminds me of my 7th grade crush. sigh. j/k. Anyhow.

Like everyone else in the world, I have experience with unrequited love. (Being that I had feelings for someone who didn't have them back.) One experience happened in college. Probably most of my friends/blog readers know/remember said experience for me. Actually, let's call this an unrequited crush.

I met him freshman year of college - we had a class together and talked briefly a couple times. He seemed like a genuinely nice person with good morals. I did some research and found out he had a serious girlfriend. I will not mention his name for the sake of protecting the innocent.

Anyhow. Long story short, he and I ran into each other a couple of times throughout college, but either I was dating someone, or he was, or the conversation was very brief and didn't allow for going anywhere personal. Well, senior year of college, I was single the entire time and started thinking about him quite a bit. About a week prior to graduation (I graduated in December of 2004, so most of the people I started college with had an extra semester left), I wrote him an email (I was just slightly ahead of my time in the dating world - back in 2004 this wasn't necessarily as common a way to ask someone out as it is now).

It went something like this:

Hi XXXX:

I don't know if you remember me - we had XXX class together freshman year and we ran into each other at XXX recently. This is kind of random, but I kind of have had a crush on you for a while and I was wondering if you were possibly interested in getting together some time. I'm graduating in two weeks so I thought I'd just get in touch and put it out there. Ok, take care!

He responded:

Hi Jaime (he spelled my name correctly!):

I definitely remember you - I enjoyed taking that class with you and it is good to hear from you. I actually have had a girlfriend for a little over a year, so I don't think it would be best for us to hang out. Congrats and good luck with graduating.

(Editor's sidenote: I do not remember either email, exactly, because, believe it or not, I didn't print it or save it, so once my U of I email account was disabled, it was lost in cyberspace. Tear.)

Sigh. The one that got away. J/k. I believe he is currently married and living in some other part of the country. Anyhow.

When I think back to him and this incident, I actually have fond memories of it - which makes me think this wasn't actually unrequited love, but rather, an unrequited crush, because, well, who remembers unrequited love fondly? At the time, I thought I felt more strongly toward him than I did. I knew he was a nice decent guy, but I didn't know him as well as I assumed to and never really had a personal connection/friendship to him (maybe this was the halo effect or something) - so it really was much more of a crush than anything.

Anyhow. Although I don't really think of this person any more (which might be hard for those who knew me back in college to believe), I don't remember him for the fact that he didn't want me in the same way I wanted him but I do remember him for being a nice decent person who was respectful to my (and other people's) feelings. That's what I remember about him and that's what I liked about him.

I do periodically wonder what he thought, getting an email completely out of the blue from a girl he hardly knew and hadn't seen or talked to in quite a while. When I think of this, it makes me think of the fact that there is probably someone completely random and unexpected out there thinking of all of us.

I have had other experiences with unrequited love - but those are stories for another day.