Dear Emily,

I was 12 when I first felt how it was to fall in love. I first saw this boy and it was a feeling so totally alien to a little girl like me. I didn’t know what it was. I knew I felt breathless for a moment. Later, I just thought about him all the time. He was visiting the province for the summer and was staying with his aunt, who was our neighbor.

I found out he had a crush on the daughter of our family driver. He was smitten by her. Since we were neighbors, his aunt introduced us but he wouldn’t even look at me. No matter how I smiled and tried to befriend him, he just totally ignored me. This boy and his crush went out every day with their friends to have fun. I was never invited. Those weeks of that summer were deeply etched in my mind for a long time. How I envied them.

We were just kids but I saw they were not awed by people’s status in life. I was only 12 and I learned that the only thing that mattered to kids was what they felt.

He and his crush grew up and went their separate ways, as did I. I didn’t see him again till our 50s. He was bald as an egg, fat and worked as a delivery truck driver. I had gotten married and had a comfortable life with my family. I was thankful at how our lives didn’t mesh, knowing now how it turned out for both of us. Though I learned the pain of loving at a very young age, I can say fate has been good to me, after all.

—UNREQUITED

You may have been just a kid at 12 but clearly, you already had the awareness to feel the pain of falling in love. The pain doesn’t vary whether you’re 12 or 50. The ache is just the same.

What was good about your narrative was seeing that the boy did not get awed by your status or did his feelings for his crush diminish by her father’s lowly job. It didn’t mean anything to him. He just knew that he liked her enough to want to be with her and spend his summer with her. It may have hurt your feelings that he took no notice of you, but he was just being true to himself.

We all follow our own drummers and just have to accept whatever fate has in store for us. It’s different strokes for different folks, as they say.

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