A Crush that Ignited Me

Love is a special spurring of the mind that does not require the aid of letters to spread its wings into the horizons of human heart. And so does the initial gentle strike of the Cupid’s arrow which we commonly hail as ‘crush’. Never have we ever been taught about it in any text books but have always felt it in our veins. And from my experience so far I reckon it to be an outflow of the love that we have received from our loved ones, be it parents, siblings, friends, teachers etc. An urge to share with others what you have in plenty. And in my case, I guess, I was brimming with it that I felt like pouring it out from my heart at the very age of 11. That was my first crush. Be it today, 11 years since,  when I narrate this story to my parents overcoming all my shyness they get stuck at the word ‘crush’. Amma is like,” what’s this crush? Is it like a crash?”, and I had to admit that it is a crash of one soul to that of the other, oops no, in my case it was the crash  of one soul on the foot of the other soul-bearer, begging him to put me right up in his heart. Because we were poles apart. He ran the topper of our class and also enjoyed the privileges of being an athlete, a singer and many more while I was solely adorned with the title of the 35th rank holder in  a class of 39. But looking through my eyes I had definite scope because after all, I was not the last person and it was  wrong to say that ‘a thing of beauty is a joy’ only  to a high strung elite community, I mean the studious, talented elite in the class. So, I made various attempts to foster a better image of mine in front of him which I presently recall as ridiculous and futile attempts that didn’t even lure his attention. I even befriended all his friends hopefully awaiting for a chance to mingle with him, as I was draining with guts to speak up to him directly. And to my dismay, his demeanour like that of any gentleman’s was to talk to only those who initiated to him except for his friends. After incessant rounds of failure, I made up my mind to give up on him and to my surprise even my  inner conscience sanctioned it, advising me over-maturely that "if I had put so and so much effort on self-development I would have yielded wonders". Finally I managed to adhere to my inner voice, focusing on my only strength which was quite a little competence in English language. Gradually I became the English vigilance monitor of my class and he my co-monitor, thus we became friends. But this time I never gave up on myself, like the game of  gambling that entices  the victim to play harder, so did  the initial results heightened my spirits to play tougher. The result was that I became the topper of my class at 8th grade, quite a good public speaker bagging inter-school prizes as I was a sophomore and eventually the Head Girl of my school. Looking back I would never say that the journey was an easy one but was a path of thorns. Each thorn made me a  stronger person and taught me to pull myself up like a bird that flutters its wings off the water or dirt that has drenched it, so as to fly higher. But the highlight of all these developments was that it was aptly acknowledged by my first crush. On our last school day, he said that he was glad to have a friend like me which fluttered my heart like no way before. I was happy, and I felt this emotion to the very core of my being. Because the secret was, he, my first crush, triggered the change!
P.S: Find your strengths and work on it, everything else would fall in its place eventually.