As I stood there thinking of what to say, literally dripping in sweat, I was surprised to hear myself yell,
“NO THANKS!”
I said no a bunch more times then did something between a skip and a run all the way back home, not just until I was out of view.
But Why? After all, this is what I wanted: to squish lips with my blonde- haired-boo.
Not for the first time in my life, fear totally consumed me – little did I know that this would morph into something hugely destructive in a much bigger way fifteen years down the line, but more about that another time.
What if we squished lips and he realised what an inexperienced lip-squisher I was? He had probably squished lips with loads of girls, a snogging connoisseur if you will. The point is, I thought that if I let Sam take me home -in a totally PG way, we were barely 13 you sickos- he would realise how much better than me he was.
Queue the violins…
NO stop the violins, no violins.
Queue the awesome drum solo because…
We’re married now!
Yeah, I’m totally lying, I never saw Sam again *record scratch*
I’ve met a butt-load of Sam types throughout the years, people who I thought were much better than me, based on little details that didn’t give me the full picture of who they were as a person at all; they’re “nice”, they have an important job, they have a ton of tattoos, they lived in another country, and so on and so forth.
Getting on Sam’s bike could’ve been the stuff that dreams are made of, or it could’ve been the worst thing ever. He could’ve inhaled most of my face into his mouth like a hungry snake, he could’ve high-fived me instead, or surprised me with racism.
All of these things have actually happened to me, not even that long ago! And guess what? In my head, all of these people started off being better than me. The only thing that changed was that I wasn’t the 13-year-old girl skip-running away before I had the chance to find out how wrong I was.
It’s a lesson I sometimes forget: nobody is better than anyone. Better at different things, yeah sure. Kendrick Lamar is better at rap than I am (arguably) but is Kendrick better at eating crisps in bed and watching reruns of Workaholics and Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Probably not.
Giving yourself value is one of the hardest and most necessary things in life, particularly involving matters of the heart.
But once you’ve figured out how to do this it’ll pave the way to truly believing that you’re enough; whether you choose to ride away on your crush’s handlebars or skip-run by yourself all the way home.
