Should I text him?

 I'm alone in my room.

First weekend after classes started and my phone burns inside my pocket.

I'm watching "Sex and The City" on my laptop and wishing I could just get on my kitten heels and mid-size skirt and march downtown like Carrie Bradshaw. I'm wishing I could just meet someone, hand them my number and act so casual about it, maybe take them to some pub I'm not allowed in yet, maybe go dinner with a big fur coat and aply lipstick on the bathroom while he waits for me on the table. Wishing I could call my girls up and go out for coffee and talk and talk about boys and jobs and money and makeup. 

Instead it's a saturday night and I'm watching Carrie falling for the biggest asshole for the fifth time. I started this because of her, because of Carrie. She always seemed to solve her problems after writting about them, and I thought to myself, if she can get over Big after just writting an article, maybe I can get over all my issues by writting too.

But I can't write for a huge newspaper or magazine, like Carrie did. I can't even write with my real name, because how will people react if they find out it's me behind the computer?

People say you have half the solution after writting about it, so here we go.

I met him two years ago. We went to this camp that lasted one month, and the second I saw him I knew he was it for me. Tall, brunette and kind. What else could my 15 year old self ask for. I think it was my first crush. My real one. I caught myself staring at him like an idiot and turning my head when I felt his eyes look back into mine. He was nice and smart and could chat for hours about stuff I didn't understand a word of. And I would listen.

He was only a year and a half older than me, so while I was 15, he was 17. He felt so old back then. And now that I'm 1 myself I can't help but think of him as a kid too. We were on the same camp group. Team yellow. They made us wear this yellow bracelets to know which team we were in and I found myself looking at it with longing eyes as if having matching bracelets made us soulmates of some kind. I wasn't even that close to him. Not during our first week, at least. Then our saturday trip came and I was seated next to him on the bus. That's when we got close. We all got close during that bus trip, actually. I became best friends with the girl I was just friends with and talked to people I've never imagined myself talking to.

He was such a nerd. I'm not even exagerating. I mean, I know I'm kind of a nerd, but he was on the next level. That might have made my crush grow, to be honest. There's just something so precious about seeing someone care so much about something you don't understand. If I see someone like the same things I do, I can't help but see it as some kind of competition: who's the biggest fan? But he was just so into space, and I knew so little about it. He spent the whole ride explaining basic stuff to me and I think my pupils might have dilated to the point where there was only black on my eyes. 

We didn't become intimate. I was too nervous to become too close to him. I think I hid it pretty well, though, because for the next three weeks, no one said a word about it. I would tease him to hide the growing ache in my heart, and my head would keep count of how many days were left until my chance was over. 

Two days and I'll never see him again.

One day and I'll never see him again. 

I didn't have instagram back then, just Snapchat, which he had admitted, did not use, so my chances of keeping this relationship working were zero. We shared one last hug goodbye and got into my parent's car, and as I drove away from camp, I would replay every interaction in my head and wonder why I couldn't have had my summer romance. Why everyone could live their dreams but me. I could feel my heart pounding and my gut shrinking with dissapointment. I cursed my stupid parents for not letting me have instagram until I was 16 and cursed him for not using Snapchat. 

I had his number. I had the number of every camper I had talked to. I had them written on the back of my shirt with black sharpie, small hearts and signatures decorating the white fabric. I texted some of the girlfriends I made, before quickly realizing they were showing less emotion than I was and quickly stopping. By october, I had stopped talking to all of those kids I had once though of as best friends, and each passing month, the though of him would only get heavier on my contact list. 

I didn't made an instagram account the day I turnt 16. It felt embarrasing to admit that I had been waiting desperately to make it because my parents wouldn't let me. So I lied and told everyone I just didn't want it, and created it only after a couple of weeks had passed. 

You might know: 

Him. 

That was one of the first follow suggestions I've got. Him. My boy. My crush. I ignored it and quickly closed the app. It'd be weird to follow him now. A few months had passed and we hadn't talked since that last hug under the warm july sun. I had tried following some other girls from camp, but none of them had accepted my request, why would he. I would be just humiliating myself. So I let it go. 

On January 2025, I found the last scrap of him left on my bedroom. Half a year and there it was. His name written on the tag of that Bon Jovi shirt. His shirt hidden on the back of my closet. His shirt hidden behind all of the camp stuff I tried to hide as to not make my surrow bigger. A shirt I had completely forgotten about. A shirt of a boy who I hadn't spoken to in almost a year. 

"You should text him about it." Said my good friend, H, who, even though she had no idea about my feelings, thought him and I would make a pretty good couple. "That way you can start talking to him again."

I felt stupid. I grabbed the shirt back from the closet and pulled out my phone. I took a picture and sent it before I could even think twice. I even forgot to add something after. No hi, no hey this is yours, no hey im from camp, you forgot this. Just a burry picture of an old shirt. 

"Who are you? I think you got mistaken, sorry." It was his answer. I wanted to cry my eyes out. He had really forgotten about me. I took a deep breath.

"It's me, Auds, from camp last year. I found this shirt, I think it's yours."

"Oh yeah shit sorry, I just hadn't saved your number"

We talked for exactly two days, until the usual "catching up" questions ended and I didn't know what else to say. I knew he was coming back to camp one last summer, I knew I wasn't, I knew he was interested enough to keep answering and asking questions back, but I also knew he wasn't interested enough to keep the conversation going when I stopped being the first one to talk.

It's been incredibly painful to be reading those texts now, a year and a half later, but it was necesary to remember it as it was. It started awkward. Of course it did. It started by him not remembering who I was.7

"Who are you? I think you got mistaken, sorry." 

Those are the words no woman want to see after texting the boy he likes, am I right? But I let my insecurities aside and thought to myself, if I want this to happen, if I want to keep in touch with him, I can't just let it slide. So I kept texting. He teased me. God I think I could feel my heart stopping when he teased me. It was all back. That fuzzy feeling on my chest, that dumb smile. 

But looking back at those texts, I had no fuzzy feeling keeping me from seeing how short that was, how long were my texts and how short were his. He was nice, of course he was, nice and funny and he not once left me on delivered. He took little time to answer every single one of my messages, and promised to write me after he came back from camp later that year, to tell me how it had gone, and after joking about how it would never be as cool as our year was, we stopped talking.

Just like that. No ghosting, no fight, no real reason to be as heartbroken as I was. 

On July 2025, a year after camp, I though I was over it. Over the memories of that summer, over the friendships that had ignored me, over the happiness I had felt, over how included I was and how invisible I felt after. Over him. 

That's when I saw him. It was one quick glance. We don't live far away. His house is just two towns away and he had told me he sometimes came to a lake near mine. But I hadn't believed it was true. I had forgotten that one day, he had been real. That it all had been real. 

I was on the lake with some friends when I saw him. Same dark hair, damp curls falling over his forehead, and those same yearning eyes. I wanted to die. He looked so good, and I was still the same kid with messy hair and an oversized vintage shirt over my bikini. I didn't tell my friends that was the boy who had broke my heart without even realizing, without it being his fault. I didn't tell them, I spent the whole afternoon trying to get him to be the one to take the first step because I was afraid if I did it, I would find out he had forgotten all about me. 

He didn't even see me. I don't blame him. The lake was packed, and my friends and I spent half the time on my parent's lake house instead of the beach. He wouldn't have had the chance to notice me, but something inside me wanted him to feel it. For him to sense that I was close. To see me. To see me so I could see him and smile and go back to being that crushing 15 year old. 

I didn't see him again until this week. I was at some college party I didn't want to attend but ended up loving, cute tank top, cuter pants, and with my mind very far away from him. His name hadn't crossed my mind on the last couple of months and neither had that longing feeling on my heart. I was fine. I was over it. 

Or so I thought. I was next to the speaker, pepsi can on my hand and other arm wrapped around my best friend H. And I saw him. Long curly hair, yearning eyes, same silly smirk, arm around another girl's shoulders.

And then his image dissapeared. It hadn't been him. It had never been him. When I turned around, the guy with the girl wasn't my boy. His face was similar but not quite the same. Same dark curls, same dark eyes but not my boy. I don't even know what happened. It seemed so real. For that second, I had thought it was him standing in front of me. I had thought it was him locking eyes with me. I had believed it and my heart had felt that subtle and heavy pain again. I had believed it was him and I had let myself be reminded of how in love I was before forgetting. My friend, of course, was so confused as why I was so emotional all of the sudden. I brushed it off and took a sip of my drink to wash those thoughts away.

I knew it hadn't been phisically him. I knew his arm wasn't the one around the girl, and those eyes staring into mine weren't the ones I had once thought would be my future. But the feeling was the same. My reaction was the same as if it had been him. Does it really matter if what you saw was real if the pain in your body is real?

I felt so stupid. The second I got to my dorm, I took off all of my clothes and threw myself in bed. It was late. Like stupidly late for me to still be worrying about it. I grabbed my phone and openned instagram. 

People you might know:

Him

And because the adrenaline in my veins was very much real, I decided to click that dangerous blue button under his profile picture. I closed my phone and wished I wasn't so desperate. I wasn't so humiliating. I wasn't such an idiot. It's been two years, I thought, if my camp friends didn't accept my follow request after only a couple of months of not talking, he's not going either. He's probably forgotten all about me, and will leave my follow request without answering until it's the last one standing on his notifications box.

I was so sure.

Follow request accepted.

X follows you back.

I want to throw up.

So what now? It's been a couple of days since he follows me and since his posting is nonexisting and when he saw one of my stories he decided to ignore it, I don't know what's the next step. I've proven I'm not forgotten on the back of his mind, he has seen my profile and known it was me. He accepted my request at 8 am the morning after I sent it, so he must have not thought much about it. But still, he keeps being a follower more instead of someone I talk to, just like he was someone on my contact list or someone on the lake one afternoon. It's like I'm forced to step back and keep a safe distance. Like I can see him and maybe say hi and follow each other, but when I try interacting there's some force of the universe keeping me away.

So what would you do, girls, would you text him?