I confessed to my crush of five years, and it was the biggest mistake I've ever made.

This is probably going to be long.

I started liking her in high school, the friend group I was in for a while kicked me out and I didn't have any friends for nine months. Eventually I gained the courage to ask a group I knew some people in if I could hang around them, she was a part of that group. It was the end of my year ten, that was in 2022.

We weren't friends immediately but I was drawn to her form the start. Eventually we started to talk, at the time I thought she was funny, beautiful. She wasn't smart in terms of test scores but she knew a lot about life. We opened up to each other, sharing more and more. The closer we got the more I was drawn to her.

During our year 11 & 12 she regularly drove me to and from school. One night I remember after a school excursion to a nearby city we got dinner, ate in her car, and drove back to my house. We started to get talk, and we opened up to each other about some things that were deeply personal to us. It ended with her crying, and me hugging her. It was around this time that I knew I liked her. This was in our year 12, 2024.

I remember for some reason, all through high school, and through to today she has always been open about her partners and sex life. Through the entire time I knew her I always knew who she was dating, who at our school she found attractive, who in fiction she found attractive, who she was sleeping with, their names, their tattoos, their kinks, and exactly how big their dick was. That last part was always my least favorite. She always made this face, her eyelids half closed, smiling, looking through her eyebrows, a little side eye. While she measured out how long it was with her fingers, and with thick it was with her thumb and index finger put together into a circle. I hated every second of it, but I never told her that I did. When she started having sex with these guys she always shared every detail of that too, what position, which hole, how much both of them loved it, how many fingers they could fit inside her. When she started anal she told me exactly how it hurt at first, then over the next few months it went from painful to tolerable, tolerable to pleasureful. Eventually she bought a butt plug that she would often wear in public, the status of which she would tell me, if it was inside, if it slipped out, if it made what she was doing uncomfortable. I hated every second of that too. To this day I feel uncomfortable when someone uses their fingers to demonstrate the size of something, or makes a face remotely similar to the one described.

Later that year we graduated, as with most people from my country we our friend group went on holiday as a group. There were nine of us, two of which being her and I, she was the last to arrive. During the trip we stayed in the same hotel room along with two of our other friends. One of the nights we were there she got extremely drunk, as she would usually do at any gathering. She was throwing up and crying in the kitchen of our room, which woke me up. I went out to help, the other two people who were in the room with us were already helping her. I stayed with her, comforting her, and taking care of her for hours. The whole time she thought that she had gotten spiked, she had only drank from a bottle of peanut butter whiskey that she bought herself. I ended up calling paramedics to the room because I was concerned for her, she had been throwing up for the past hour, and I wanted to put her at ease. They checked her out and she was fine, they told us to get her to shower, and get her to bed. The process of which was arduous, she fell on my bed at one point, she was stumbling everywhere, didn't want to do any of what we told her. We eventually got her to bed, and one of my friends and I stayed up the rest of the night to make sure she didn't throw up in her sleep. We ended up being awake until the sun came up. Unknown to me when she fell on my bed she landed on my pair of sunglasses, which were a gift from my parents, costing ~$300. The next morning she woke up and greeted us like nothing happened. When I was, in my opinion, understandably mad at her and was avoiding her she asked me "What crawled up your ass and died?". I was pissed to say the least and told her exactly why I was mad with her, and when I asked for the money to replace those glasses she blew up at me over text. She called me a "Karen" apparently not understanding why I was mad at her. Despite it all, I still liked her. I have no clue why.

When we eventually returned like with most friend groups we started to grow apart a little, the idea of which drove her to tears at least once. We messaged often, by my estimate at least once a week, and sometimes everyday. It was around this time that I thought that she might actually be interested in me. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, he was 21 when they started dating, she was 17. She bragged about having sex with him constantly and about how he was a "grower". The few times he was around us it felt extremely uncomfortable as he was older than all of us, and all of us were still underage. Of course they were constantly all over each other. The worst part was when he would imitate what she sounded like during sex in front of everyone. Only once it was over did she tell us that he was emotionally abusive, had a tiny penis, and that his ex whom he claimed stabbed him, was defending herself from him. It was messed up, we saw signs but when we told her early on she brushed them off. They broke up in February of that year, right around when I started uni. At least once she offered to be friends with benefits, to which I declined. At least once she sent me lewd photos which I never asked for. At least twice she flashed me, which I only joked about. At this point I still liked her. I never told her I liked her through this time, I was scared of messing things up.

We only saw each other a handful of times last year, when all of what happened above took place. most times it was either with other friends, or awkward by ourselves. The first time she visited me after I moved towns she brought one of her friends, and stayed barely an hour. We had delayed this multiple weeks, multiple times, and I talked with her friend she brought more than I talked with her. I went to her birthday in October, and it was probably the one of the worst parties I've been to. she got extremely drunk and high, pulled her usual stick. "Are my eyes red?" "I'm not drunk" and telling you exactly how much she loved you as a friend. I remember I went, said hi to her, probably didn't talk to her for the majority of the night, and left. Before I left she kissed me on the cheek. I didn't feel anything from that, just a little uncomfortable.

Christmas last year, she didn't have any family to spend it with, or friends. I offered for her to spend it with my family. The whole day felt a little awkward, we sat near each other the whole time, and she didn't move away. That night she stayed at my place, we had spent the majority of Christmas day at my Nan's. That night she told me some things about her life that I won't repeat here, I'll just say they would be heavy for anyone to carry. I comforted her, and we cuddled a little. At the end of it all she said "Thanks bro". That was an other thing she did that always made me die a little inside, she always called me bro, or dude. Not exactly what you want to hear from someone who you've been in love with for the past four years. Not matter what it was the always called me bro, or dude, never my name, you could tell me she'd forgotten it completely and I might believe you, I can't recall a single instance when she has said my name in the past year. No matter what I was comforting her from she never said "Thank you, (Name) I appreciate it" It was always "Thanks bro." or "Thanks dude." after years of it, it starts to take a toll. I walked her to the train station early the next morning, when I said goodbye I said "I love you, (Name)". She gave me the same side hug she always did, and said "Thanks, bro". I still liked her after this.

Sometime this year, we met up again at the above mentioned friend's place. We swam in her pool and afterwards she showed me the guest bedroom where I'd be sleeping. My crush jumped onto the bed as a joke, and I did too. To my memory we started cuddling a little, if I remember correctly she was on top of me. It didn't lead anywhere, and it didn't last more than a couple of minutes at most. It's all a little fuzzy. That moment was and probably remains the closest I've come to being intimate with anyone. In that moment everything disappeared, the anger from when she broke my sun glasses, all the times she called me dude, all the other guys who's dick sizes were explained to me in detail, the confusing nudes, that bullshit side hug, all the times she got too drunk, the time I told her I was self conscious of my body and she responded with the chorus from "all about that bass", when she'd constantly try and set me up with her friends I had never met before, everything. We never talked about that since.

Months later in April of this year a mutual friend was having a party, we were both invited. I got there on time, despite living the furthest from the designated location. She was hours late. When she arrived I felt myself drop, we hadn't been talking much. See in the time that she was with her new boyfriend who was helping her get through her numerous addictions, he had gotten her addicted to other things. The only times we talked were when she was high, I could see her eyes look like they were rolling back, I tired to tell her that he was only making things worse but I could never find the courage to. She told me at least once that she intended to have a child with this man, they had only been dating a few months at the time, she had known him for two years. So seeing her at a party like this was definitely an experience. I had no desire to talk to her here, so I didn't and she seemed to take the hint. When she tried to talk to me I kept it to the bare essentials to get past the conversation. She would stick around maybe a minute before going off to talk to someone else. Throughout the evening I came to find that once reunited with our old high school friends she had kept the exact same personality. Making jokes about one of the other male group members being attractive, how he's in a gay relationship with every other male member of the group, making a joke about "gifting" him to the person who's birthday it was, the reason the party was happening in the first place. She made that joke in front of his girlfriend, who she had been around prior to this day exactly once. It exhausted me. At this point we had been graduated for over a year, she hadn't changed a bit.

It was around here that I realized that she wasn't funny anymore, maybe she never was if this was the way she acted when I met her. All her attempts at humor that night had failed, and thinking back there hasn't been a time in recent memory where she said anything humorous that stuck with me. Communicating with her through messages was also a pain because of her attempts of humor within them which was limited to sending an image that had no relation to what the conversation was about. She always spelled "Yo" with an h at the end "Yoh" which annoyed me for years. Anything interesting you presented her with she would just say "Yum" or "Yummy", even in person she would say this. If you asked her what it meant she would say something to the effect of "It's yum!" and I hated it, use your fucking words. She always called me by this nickname, I won't say what it was because it may give away my name. I hated the nickname and I told her multiple times that I did, mostly because it was a nickname for a different name that wasn't mine. No matter how many times I told her I hated it she to this day never stopped using it.

When I told her I liked her it was over text, I had a terrible day that day. I'm a film student and we had a script reading of one I had written, and it felt like everyone in the room had never spoken English before. It was humiliating to say the least. I had been in bed for hours listening to stratosphere by Duster, and figured I had nothing to lose, at least if she said no then I wouldn't have to talk to her again. I sent a message saying just straight up that I liked her, she just responded "Thanks bro". Typical. I sent her another reinforcing that I was serious, she said something to the effect of "Sorry I don't fuck with friends". That really did encompass the her whole view point on things, that sex came first and then you find love in that person afterwards. It is something that can happen in reality but it's usually the other way around. Stories of people having sex then falling in love are usually those found in fiction, and rare occurrences in reality. To her it was flipped, as displayed in multiple of her relationships, of which I can specifically name two maybe three. She had said the doesn't feel the same in her own way, I chose to respect that. I said something along the lines of "That's not what I want but I respect you, take care.". Later that night she tried to call me and asked to sort this out, this was the last time she would try to contact me directly to this day. Even more later that night I got a message from one of my friends that she had told him how I felt about her. You know there really is a deep sense of sick irony that I kept her secrets to myself, never told anyone, and tried my best to get her through them. However as soon as the roles are flipped she gets to turn around and tell not just one of my friends, but one of my best friends. I was humiliated to say the least. This should have been the last time I talked to her, I would have liked to be. It was not.

For a while I still followed her social media, maybe out of fear of letting go, or something else, but eventually I unfollowed them all. For at least the next month I had no contact with her, and I tired not to think about her. Eighth of June, 16 days ago as of writing, I get added to a group chat that contains me, her, the friend she told, and four other mutual friends. I get informed the friend she told is hold a little get together at his place, the next city over from where I live. I hadn't seen him in months and I did want to see him, but the prospect of seeing her again was extremely distressing. For days I considered going, I asked friends outside this chat if I should and almost unanimously the answer was I should go but ignore her. I told one of my friends about how I felt before this trip on the day, and she said I wasn't over her. I made the trip down on Monday, the same day the event was taking place, I had to leave uni at 5pm and I got on a train at around 5:24pm it was set to arrive at the station near my friends place at 6:54pm. I had to stand for the majority of the trip because it was peak hour. I brought the last third of a joint that I had been working down for the last week, with the intention to smoke it just before I arrived at the friends place. I did just that, somehow despite being the person furthest from this friends place I arrived at the same time as the first people to show up, who lived much closer. I hanged behind to smoke, I knew this friend didn't fuck with weed that much. I was still in the heart racing part of being high that I experience for the first 20 minutes before I chill out when she arrived. I was conflicted, at first my heart dropped, and I couldn't move or say a word. I spent the last few weeks ranting about how much I hated being around her, and I was ready to be filled with that hatred when I was around her. For some strange reason that wasn't the only emotion I felt. For some reason I can't pin down I felt the same attraction that I used to feel for her in high school. I don't know why, by all means I should hate her, I have mountains of reasons why I can't stand the idea of being in the same room as her, but now that I was I couldn't stop thinking about her, in both a positive and negative way. When she got there she was okay to be around over the night she displayed a bunch of qualities that I hated, her poor sense of humor, bragging about her new boyfriend's dick size, and how he had the same name as one of the people in attendance that night. She had taken up smoking in place of vaping, which she used to do all the time when she had a spare second, at a party inside or outside, while driving, while doing nothing. If she wasn't strictly forbidden from vaping she was vaping. In fact the whole reason for being late for this get together was that she was waiting for the smoke shop to open. I don't know how it takes two and a half hours to get cigarettes, then travel 45 minutes by train. Over the course of the night she smoked half the pack, which she bragged about. The whole reason she is smoking is apparently it's cheaper then vapes, and the fact that they're more deadly for you, she often did mention that she wants to die. She avoided me the whole night, and I did the same, the only thing I would have wanted to say to her that night if given the chance was that what she did, telling the friend, was wrong and that she shouldn't have. That opportunity never came. An other thing she bragged about was her Only fans which she started recently, she spent a good portion of the night telling anecdotes about how a man twice her age asked her to fart in a bag and send it to him, and about how much she was making from it, apparently showing bank statements to one of our friends. She had joked for years that she was so broke she would have to "Start selling feet pics" something she brought up often, I don't know if she was being genuine or if it was another attempt at being funny. Given the situation now, I feel it was a bit of both. I'm ashamed to admit that I was already using Only fans for a month or two before this, I'm not proud of it in the slightest, in fact I hate myself for it. The next morning I had to wake up early, I stayed at the friend's place and woke up just before seven am, which was already late. I got to uni about five minutes late in the same clothes as I left the previous day. The thought of her only fans wouldn't leave my mind, it didn't take long to find it, the link was in the bio of her tiktok page. I stared at it in the bathroom. $15.99 a month. More expensive than any of the other accounts I had paid for. Through the whole day any time I was alone I looked at the front page of it, that number staring back at me. When I got home around 5pm I logged onto my computer and opened her page. Now for some reason it was $10.99 a month. I contemplated for minutes, would she know it was me? Was what was on there worth that much money? This certainly wouldn't be the largest amount of money I have spent on her. Needless to say my bank account balance is now $10.99 closer to zero. The act of even looking at these pictures made my face turn a bright red, I could feel how hot it was, I felt shame wash over me every second I spent on her page. When I finished I felt nothing, no catharsis, no relief, no joy, nothing. I showered and started writing this post.

It's taken me multiple hours and as of writing this is the second time I sat down to write. The first time I got chest pain so bad I had to call an ambulance to take me to the emergency room. Funny thing is this wasn't the first time I had this chest pain, the first was at that get together on Monday, it started around the same time she showed up. I had the same pain almost the whole time I was writing this yesterday. I am coming off of a viral infection which has left me with a cough, the doctor at the hospital said that was the most likely reason they could discern for the chest pain. The people in the ambulance however said that if the doctors couldn't find a reason it could likely be stress or anxiety that manifested into pain. I even felt a little bit of the same pain while I was writing this earlier. There is a non zero chance that thinking about her is the reason for this chest pain, that the stress of talking about her, and being around her, causes me physical pain. I hate that. That she was such a big part of my life that I can't let go, and now she causes me actual pain. I don't want to think about her, I feel like I hate her with every fiber with my being, I hate the idea of her talking about me behind my back, I hate that she'll give away her love to the worst people, but when it comes to me, she never gave me the time of day. I hate how she pretends to be into something, while only knowing the surface level knowledge about it, I hate how she always brought up the human centipede because of one tiktok comedy song, she would talk about it all the time. I hate how she always tried to auction me off to her friends, I hate the way she snorts when she laughs, I hate her laugh in general, I hate that her tiktok account has more followers than mine, she hasn't posted an original thing on it in the whole time I've known her. I hate seeing the same cycle of her getting in a relationship, saying whoever shes in it with is the best, breaking up, saying that the person she was with was always the worst, swearing off relationships, the getting in one two months later. She was always cringe at parties, taking a swig of straight liquor and trying to act like someone from a music video, or teen comedy film. She's always try and run away while she was drunk, and you tend to get sick of it the 16th time it happens and you have to chase after her to make sure she's safe. I hate her music taste, it was always the most white girl bullshit, she told me she was getting into metal because she was listening to corpse husband, this was last year. She claimed to love video games, which was limited to shit Roblox games, any time we played any game we were mutually into she was abysmal dog shit. She actually found Hazbin Hotel "funny and relatable". I hate that I comforted her through her body dysmorphia and problems with her weight, but when I told her I had the same problems she didn't handle them with nearly the same amount of tact or respect as I gave her. I hate all the times I tried to talk to her about her problematic relationship with drugs and alcohol, and she brushed me off saying, "I know my limit", she almost OD'd at least once, and she's thrown up from being drunk countless times. I hate all the times she said she was ugly, she was one of the most gorgeous people I ever met, and only now do I realize she was probably fishing for complements the whole time. She had terrible taste in movies, I couldn't stand half the ones she made me watch, but I never told her I hated them. When we ate breakfast once at this waterside cafe she spent the whole time on her phone, not with me, the person she traveled multiple hours to see, her phone. These are just a few of the specific moments I can think of, there are countless reasons I can find to say I hate her. There are also countless a more naive version of me could list as to why I fell in love with her. I hate her, and I can't get rid of her. Not from my head, not from my friend circle, not from my life. I'm starting to think I'll never be rid of her. I hate her so much, but some part of me can't let her go.

I'm turning 20 this year, I met her when I was 15. That's a quarter of my life I've spent wanting her. I want nothing more than to be over her I fear though that wanting her has become a habit, and that stopping could be like quiting smoking.

She's destroyed me from the inside out, and she'll never know.