There are some things that are only corny until they happen to you. Falling in love is one of them.

You read all these stories about people falling in love, and all that stupid stuff about them finding their "true love" and the one person they've been dreaming about. That's corny, right? I used to think so too.

For at least three years, I've been dreaming of a certain boy, and in my dreams I fell in love with him. These visions were the type where I could tell that something in them would come true someday, and I was content to wait.

Everything changed last summer.

I'd never dated before, and although I'd had crushes, I didn't really understand how the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing worked. While I figured I could probably get up the nerve to ask someone out, I had no idea of what would happen if he said yes.

So I don't see why I thought that that month would be any different.

Things happened rather quickly once I stepped off the bus to camp that summer. In fact, it was the very first day that I met him. I was in line for dinner, and he was right in front of me. I looked up at him and thought he was pretty cute, and somehow he seemed like someone I was destined to know, so I decided to talk to him. He was wearing a Metallica shirt, so we started talking about music.

It wasn't until that night when I was recording the day's events in my journal that I fully realized who he was- this was the boy I had been dreaming about.

This was my true love.

As time wore on, I didn't see that much of him, although I made an effort to. Sometimes I would sit in the lobby, pretending to do something, just so I could watch him and try to talk to him. He was one of the most approachable guys I've ever met, and I wanted so badly to talk to him, yet sometimes I just got so shy and couldn't think of what to say. Other times I would sit alone in my room and listen to the music of the piano downstairs, and wonder if he was the musician, since I quickly found out as much as I could about him without feeling like a stalker, including the fact that he played the piano.

Unknowingly, he became my inspiration, my muse. Just watching him, I could write anything, but as soon as he left the room, I froze, and color got sucked out of my world with the closing of the door behind him.

The smallest events became the highlights of my days. When we would go to the auditorium for an assembly, I would always sit in the same spot and watch him look for a seat, trying to make him notice me without being too obvious. It was definitely the best part of my day the time he finally sat next to me. I was nervous, though, and could hardly say anything.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's allowing myself to be content with a situation as it is, rather than trying to improve it. Half of me is worried that I might make it worse, while the other part knows I'm just making excuses for myself. It wasn't until two weeks after our first meeting that I finally let him know how I felt- and actually, that wasn't even me. My friend Sarah, whom I had told of my situation, dragged me over to him one morning before classes and asked him if he would go out with me, then she disappeared, leaving me to get the answer on my own.

He said no.

He mumbled something about only having two weeks of camp left, then he ran off to his class, leaving me alone to collect the scattered pieces of my heart.

That afternoon, I sat again watching him and writing, but this time my writing was a poem to him.

I wrote how I watched him, how his sunglasses reflected so I couldn't see his eyes.

I wrote how I remembered when he sat next to me in the auditorium, and how I tried to talk to him.

I wrote how I was sorry that things turned out how they did that morning, how I hadn't wanted to do it like that.

That evening I did what I felt was the most daring thing of my life- I gave him the poem. I'd written poems about the guys I liked before, but this was the first time I'd ever given such a poem to that guy. I pressed it into his unsuspecting hand and walked quickly away, afraid to see his reaction too soon. In fact, I kind of tried to avoid him for the next day or so, but he went on as though nothing had happened, so we went on as friends.

The day before we were to leave I wrote him a letter, telling him almost all of what I've just said here. As we boarded the bus to the airport, I gave it to him, folded up small, and asked him not to read it until he was on the plane. Again, for some reason, I was afraid of what might happen if I saw his reaction. And again, when he emailed me later, when he was back home in Michigan and I was in Connecticut, he acted as if nothing important had been in that letter.

Like I said, corny, right? And I don't know if I should have expected anything to happen. Even so, I can't think that the story about this boy I've been dreaming about would end here, but every day, I remember less and less. I keep rereading my journal and looking at my pictures of him, trying to remember how I felt about him, see if I still feel that way. I wonder sometimes if I'll ever see him again, but I remind myself that there's just something about fate that won't let some dreams die.

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