If one of your best friends didn’t take your crush from you, then did you really live through middle school?

Jesse’s Girl came in the middle of our first year, she left the same way she came. Quickly and quietly. She turned my world upside down. She’d taken things I didn’t even know I had. Jesse’s girl was not my girl. 

I remember how I found out he liked her, it was during Night Prep. Silence required. Someone passed me a note, my heart stopped. “Can you pass it to Jesse’s Girl,” “Sure,” I breathed. 

All through the night I passed notes between Jesse and Jesse’s Girl, holding my breath and fighting the urge to not open the telegram. Until I didn’t. 

“Would you be my girl?” it read. I sighed with knots forming in my stomach. 

But still, “I liked him first” I whined quietly to myself as they unsubtly hard launched their relationship by slowly dancing to every song on Social night. I smiled at them, the idea of being so wrapped up in your own world that nothing else mattered sounded really good to me. I giggled with my friends as we looked at them so enthralled in their idea of love. At that moment I bet we all thought they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. It felt real. 

I’m not gonna lie, I only knew her for less than two years. Two years of disdain. Pause. 

I don’t want you to think I hated her for a guy. I didn’t hate her. Period. She was just very different from me. Different in a way I knew we would never be friends. I didn’t dislike her either. In fact we had lots of moments together. We pulled pranks on our teachers and house mothers together. There were lots of laughs, lots of giggles, as young girls do. 

However, she was different, completely opposite from me. I want to say she wasn’t girl’s girl but I refuse to write anything that may not be true. I don’t want to lie to you. I have no reason to lie to you. She wasn’t a bully, wasn’t cruel, at least not to my face. Jesse wasn’t a prize, I couldn’t hate her because Jesse. It is not in my blood to hate another girl for a man. 

Jesse’s girl was an athlete, she was a different kind of pretty. She wasn’t the pretty you saw in movies, or subtle pretty. She wasn’t even modestly pretty, you know the kind of pretty where it’s mostly in the eyes, and at first I didn’t think she was pretty at all. But still attractive.  She had decent grades, very far from the dumbest in the room. Not smarter than me though, my ego couldn’t take it. 

She changed my life, for the first time I had to take a look at myself from the inside. I had to make some changes. I had to admit I was wrong. There was nothing she had that belonged to me, and I had no reason to whine. 

I look at her life now, it’s beautiful. Her business is minded, she’s engaged, healthy, happy and living in my dream country. But it’s not about me, it never was. 

Sometimes you find yourself coming second to someone who isn’t even in competition with you. I don’t deserve to wish her a happy life, because coming from me it’ll mean nothing. She doesn’t need me wishing her well. 

I wonder if she asks about him, or knows what happened to him or even cares.