He Smiled, I Blushed. I Thought It Was Love.

I was seventeen. I was just waiting for my main character moment, and the entire world felt like a movie. It took place in a location as commonplace as a high school library on a Tuesday. The scent of lemon cleaner and old paper filled the air. I was trying to find a book for English class while hiding in the fiction section.
I saw him then.
He did not attend my school. Perhaps in college, he was older. His brown hair was messy and he was wearing a band t-shirt. He looked on a high shelf but couldn’t find the book he was looking for. I had a funny stomach jump as I watched him stretch.

I must have sounded, or perhaps he sensed my gaze. He turned his head. Our eyes met. For a second, the whole noisy library went completely silent.

Then, he smiled.

It wasn’t a big, dramatic smile. It was small. A little crooked. However, it was intended for me. The corners of his eyes wrinkled. My heart twitched. My cheeks turned hot. I knew I was flushing, but I could do nothing about it. With the curls falling like covering to conceal my face, I glanced down at my shoes.
He was gone when I looked up.

That was it. A five-second moment. But it felt like an hour. For the remainder of the day, I was unable to think of anything else. I kept playing it in my head like my favorite song. The stretch. The turn. The smile. The blush.

Creating a World at a Glance

The most crucial thing that ever occurred to me was a short moment. I started going to the library at the same time every Tuesday. I pretended to be studying, but I was just waiting. I’m hoping.
I never saw him again.
That didn’t stop me, though. That smile served as the cornerstone of my identity.

I decided he was kind. I decided he was smart because he was in the library. I decided he had a deep laugh. I imagined our conversations. I imagined him holding my hand. In my mind, we were already in love. It was a love built entirely on a single, silent interaction.

I told my best friend about him.

“You’re crazy,” she said & chuckled. “You don’t even know his name!”

However, I thought I did. I learned everything I needed to know from that smile. Or so I thought.

The Slow Fade of a Fantasy

Months passed. Like a photograph exposed to the sun, the memory of the smile began to fade. I no longer spent Tuesdays at the library. In my own class, I began to notice boys. Real boys, who talked and joked and sometimes had annoying habits.

I realized something important. I wasn’t in love with him. How could I be? I did not even know him.

I was in love with the feeling. The feeling of being seen. The electric jolt of attention from someone mysterious. At seventeen, I was a cup waiting to be filled with something exciting. His smile was the first drop. The rest was left to my imagination, which poured possibilities and dreams into the cup.

What That Smile Really Taught Me

Now, years later, I understand what really happened in that library. It wasn’t a love story. It was a growing-up story.

That blush was a reaction to something new and thrilling. That crush was my heart practicing for the real thing. It was safe because it was never real. He could never disappoint me. He could never break my heart. He was perfect because he existed only in my mind.

I learned that first “love” often isn’t about the other person. It’s about us It concerns us. It’s about realizing how capable we are of experiencing intense emotions. It’s about the lovely, agonizing hope that we might be noticed and considered unique by someone.

“Loving someone else isn’t always the goal of a crush. It’s about finding the lovely, overwhelming capacity for feeling that resides inside of you and getting your heart ready for the real thing.”

I don’t even remember his face clearly anymore. But I remember the blush. I remember the hope. I remember the girl I was — full of wonder and ready for her life to begin.

That smile didn’t give me a love story. It gave me a story about myself. It taught me that our hearts are powerful storytellers. And sometimes, the most important love is the one we learn to give ourselves after we finish dreaming about strangers in libraries.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.