falling in love without love catching you

Falling in love feels huge, a significant turning point in our life. It’s like stepping off a cliff without knowing if there’s something waiting to catch you, but you still jump anyways. Most of the time, we don’t even know if what we’re feeling is love. Especially when we’re young.

Growing up, I wasn’t the girl people noticed. I was like the background character, some may know as the “designated ugly fat friend” if you’re doom scrolling on TikTok as much as I am. Maybe I was just overthinking. But you can’t deny, when you’re standing in a group of pretty girls and every boy looks right past you every single time, the message is loud and clear: I am not wanted. And I still believe that.

There was a time that I stopped believing in that though.

Mixing chemicals and experiments were never my focus in science class. My focus was the boy next to me, the one who would ask me why I’m laughing and what class I had next. Complained about PE with me, smiled at my jokes, and copied my notes. He helped me with whatever I asked him to do, and I couldn’t believe it. Surprised that a boy would talk to me, willingly, and not out of pity, or force. My friends started to make their jokes, stories, exploring their delusions. And me? I was happy, for once. He made me feel something I’ve never felt before: maybe I’m not invisible after all.

Reciting lines and rehearsals were never my focus in drama class either. I watched the first teacher-assigned-partner I liked, messing around with the curtains or laughing at each other forget our next line.

He was one of the things that made me wake up excited for the day.

But it all ended just as quickly as it began. In a school where people come and go, I was 14 years old. Falling for someone I never confessed to, only to lose him anyway. He left to a different school in a different country that year. I remember the last day of school so clearly — the sky pouring rain, my voice calling his name, and him never looking back.

That night I sent him a message. He replied once. And then nothing. Now, almost two years later, I’m still left on sent.

So what does it mean to fall without being caught?

It feels like a wound that has etched onto my skin forever.

It’s like hitting the ground and realizing no one ever planned to hold you.

It means learning that sometimes, no matter how tightly you hope, you were never in someone else’s arm to begin with.

There are nights when I replay it all: the texts, the teasing, the photos, the way he made me laugh, the way I made him smile. I torture myself with what could have been, until the memories blur into tears on my pillow.

I tell myself to stop thinking about it all, to focus on the present and what I have ahead of me. Because I’m still so young and love — is it even real at this age? I don’t even know if it was ever love. All I know is that he was the first boy who saw me, the first boy that made me feel like I mattered.

And if I were to see his face now, I know I would lose myself all over again.