What If?!

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I got a text just after New Years' from the first psychic I'd ever seen and have since built up a great rapport with. She said she was running a promotion until the end of the month for a one hour reading and the client would get a $60 gift voucher to put towards another reading or course in future. I took it as a sign that there was something I needed to know and was nearly always up for a reading even if it was just for the fun of it.

When I got around to having one with her, she said everything for the most part was going well for me, that I should embrace being a Scorpio because it's part of who I am and that there was a lot of good things to come in my future.

She did a general reading to start with, then asked me what I specifically wanted to look at. I told her to just do a bit of everything and whatever I was meant to know would come through.

She said my social circles would expand, I was about to enter into study (I've just enrolled into my 2nd year of uni), I would do some travelling later in the year, even though I was skeptical since the timing she gave would mean it was halfway through my 2nd semester. She told me she didn't want to disagree with me, but it was what was coming up. I was to go to the Greek Isles or similar and I'd be in a relationship when I did so.

She also told me there were 2 guys around me even though I had no idea about them as yet, but by March or so they'd come forward and by around May something would happen with one of them. Again I was skeptical but took her word for it.

She went on to talk about work and said that I was good at what I did and to keep going but I just hadn't found a way to make money from what I really wanted to do. She felt like the idea was there but I just wasn't seeing it, but eventually I would and to just keep doing what I was doing.

I then asked her my burning question which was the main reason I wanted to have a reading. I asked her about the guy from high school that liked me. I asked her if, like everyone else had told me and I also knew, my thinking about him was just me trying to process stuff and not actually about him. I really just wanted to know why I couldn't just accept the fact that he'd liked me and move on with my life like he had, rather than letting it sit for so long like some kind of incomprehensible truth.

She told me she could see the guy I was talking about and he carried a torch for me for a long time and that everyone else could see it but me. I thought it was hilarious and absurd. I knew exactly how Jimmy Fallon felt when Nicole Kidman admitted to having a crush on him.

She told me that although he felt something really intensely for me, when he left it was too hard for him so he cut it off and just settled for his now wife. It broke my heart more than a little to think that I was his first choice but never believed it. The way she said it made it sound like he'd just given up and chosen someone else instead.

I asked her if he'd been in love with me or just really liked me. She said the word that came up was 'unattainable', but he'd felt as strong a feeling as a 15 year old boy could. I was someone that he never thought he had a chance with.

The thought completely blew my mind. To think that there was someone who had as strong feelings for me as I had had for my high school crush, or as close as. I wondered if he thought I was unattainable because of the feelings I had for my crush, or because I kept a defensive wall up and refused to admit almost anyone entry or maybe it was for a whole other reason I wasn't aware of.

I asked her if our paths would cross again or if his part in my life was over. She told me that we lead completely different lives and although the future isn't set in stone, the only way we'd be likely to see each other again is by chance.

She briefly mentioned that he definitely wanted to be with me (or sleep with me, the phone connection was iffy) and I asked her if it was because I had big boobs, she told me it wasn't about that for him.

I then asked her about his wife, she said they'd been friends for a while and he felt he could approach her more because they had similar energies. I told her from what I remember hearing about her when they first started dating, they seemed like a good match.

I asked her if there was any chance he still felt something for me after all this time and even ventured into asking her if he would cheat on his wife with me (not that I would ever want to break up a marriage or cause anyone pain, but curiosity got the better of me). She said although he is married and happy, his heart would skip a beat or two if he saw me and he'd remember what he felt back in the day, but he wouldn't cheat because he respected me too much to make me the other woman.

I told her, from my perspective, if he were single I'd be interested to see what could happen between us. She told me that if he were single now, he might look me up and want to have a coffee, but she didn't think anything more would come of it because of how he felt around me. She told me if I'd even touched him back in high school, he would've melted. It was absolutely hilarious for me to think I had that much power over anyone, let alone him!

I thought about the fantasies I'd been recently creating in my head where I'm back in high school but I'm the person I am now and my best friend isn't interested, or as interested in him (and actually encouraged me to go for him like others had), so I could actually believe and revel in him liking me, but it took on a different tone with the knowledge that he thought he could never be with me. I know that I would have died if my crush had legitimately made a move on me, so I could only imagine how the other guy would have felt in a similar situation.

She told me I have magnetism with guys, I can talk easily with them and know how to flirt which is always handy. She said that I'm intelligent, talk a million miles an hour and am passionate about what I say which they find appealing and that being a Scorpio, I'm very intense which is what a lot of guys like.

I told her that I knew he liked me because everyone told me he did, but I refused to believe it because I'd been hurt so badly by the people around me that I was convinced there was nothing likable about me, so I took it as a cruel sick joke that everyone was playing on me, and even told the teacher on them.

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She told me that the people around me were just nasty, but it also had something to do with my parents and my upbringing, that I'd had a really tough time and unless people lived inside my head, they wouldn't have been able to understand.

I told her about the therapy session I'd had prior to the last time I saw her where my therapist had told me that the most crucial years of a person's life were the ones around the time they hit puberty (typically between the ages of 9-13) and that was where I was developing my sense of self and who I was which had been damaged badly. I told her if I hadn't found something to hold onto at that time I probably would've killed myself because life would have just been far too hard to deal with.

Thinking back to it, I wondered if I had taken my own life, knowing now how much this guy had felt for me, what would he have done if I had gone through with it? How would he have reacted?

As I thought through what she'd told me, I thought about him and how he'd moved on and found happiness, then remembered a picture I'd seen of him recently where he was out with his mates on the water. I wondered if we'd ever end up crossing paths again and if so, what would happen. Would if be a brief 'hey, long time no see!' and that's it, or would we get the chance to have a heart to heart about everything that's happened over the past decade or so.

She told me that he wasn't looking me up or anything and had pretty much moved on with his life. I told her I knew I should do the same, but just couldn't seem to, which is why I wanted to have the reading, to find out what I wasn't seeing, what was holding me back.

Towards the end of the reading she gave me a link to a Youtube video for selective attention and told me that guys were really bad at showing or even telling a girl they liked them. They took rejection a lot harder than girls did and had to save face in front of their friends. At the end of the day, no matter what age a guy is, he's a puppy. If a girl so much as looks at him, he'd die of happiness.

At the end of the reading I felt myself getting emotional and held back tears until we'd hung up. The psychic told me there was a lot I needed to process when it came to this guy, especially after I'd pointed out that she'd given me a lot of good news about the future, but I'd been much more focused on him and his wife. She told me there was a lot of stuff that should have been dealt with back in high school but that she herself still felt baffled by a lot of things that had happened for her during high school. She gave me an example of a guy that liked her threw paint on her, she said he did it to impress his friends because he didn't want them to know he liked her or he'd get teased for it.

I suggested if maybe the other guy had come out and told me he liked me, I might have taken him more seriously, but she said it wouldn't have happened because guys aren't like that. They're not very good at showing or telling a girl they like her so they end up losing out in the end because she has no idea. She told me of some of the readings she'd done for guys who were completely smitten by a girl and they admitted they hadn't done anything to let her know because they froze up when she came near them. She said she hoped I got to do a reading for a guy someday because it was hilarious to see how much of a puppy they were.

After the reading I cried for about half an hour, then on and off as emotion struck me. The gravity of the revelation, knowing how much this guy had liked, possibly even loved me, was both mind-blowing and shattering. The only thing I'd ever really wanted in high school was to be loved by someone, and by her account, he wanted and waited to be that person for so long until he couldn't do it anymore. I realized that while I was making it seem more complicated that it really was, the issue was a lot deeper which is why I was struggling to get past or even process it.

Until therapy got to the nitty gritty of my mind and belief patterns, I'd spent so long with the foundational belief that I was worthless, that no one liked me and I had nothing to offer. To realize that the entire time I thought that, there was someone else looking at me who apparently thought the complete opposite, feels like a revelation. It's like your entire life you're told one thing and are convinced by it, then suddenly a bomb goes off and changes everything you thought you knew and now you don't know how to deal with the aftermath so you just sit there thinking 'a bomb went off'.

It doesn't seem like a big deal when you say it out loud, "a guy back in high school liked me, really liked me". Okay, whatever. It's hard to just sit and swallow something that you're struggling to process or even comprehend.

I keep thinking of Jessica Alba's voice-over from the Dark Angel intro and outro, “Sometimes I feel like it happened to someone else, that it was someone else's life”. I always saw myself as a massive loser, invisible, a nobody that people would do anything to not be around, rarely observed general hygiene unless my parents demanded it, wore my brothers hand-me-down over-sized jumper to hide my shame at having developed early and just generally being overweight and more often than not, had toothpaste staining my jumper on the few occasions that I actually cleaned my teeth. I never thought I was good enough for anyone or anything and that how the other kids made me feel. 

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The psychic told me to take my time in dealing with everything, not that it meant to start stalking him and/or his wife, but to bring up everything in therapy because there was obviously a lot there to process and it was going to take some time to do that.

She reminded me of the good news that romance was coming. I would have two choices of guys and I'd actually like them which would then develop into love and I'd feel comfortable with them. She said it's all part of my self development which is what a lot of this year is about for me, but I'm definitely in a better place overall than I was last time I saw her, which feels about right.

Despite everything she's told me and everything I know, I still feel like I had to have done something in particular for him to like me. Maybe it's based on the false beliefs I've held for so long, but part of me, if ever I was given the chance, wants to ask him 'Why me?!' although I guess the whole point is that he did and as my therapist told me, I can look inside myself to find out why, even if I am curious for his input. 

I feel like telling him about my perspective on high school if only so I can get the truth out. Sure, part of me hopes that it reignites something within him and maybe someday, if it's meant to be, I'll get the chance to be with him that I missed out on in high school, but more realistically I hope to answer questions which he possibly didn't know he had. I feel like he deserves to know to full truth, that I didn't exactly have a choice in liking my crush, if only I'd believed that I deserved love and wasn't terrified of being hurt again, also if my best friend hadn't had a massive crush on him. Sure part of me wonders if it matters to him, or just to me. Whether if I told him everything it would help him or really make any difference at all given how much time has passed and things have changed.

I guess I ultimately I want to thank him for trying to love me when I didn't think there was anything about me to love or that I was worth loving. To tell him I'm sorry for being too scared to open up and let him in, in the first place. I always saw myself as a broken toy that had been chewed up, spit out, used and abused. It was much safer, definitely not easier, but safer for me to try desperately to win my crush's heart knowing that I probably never would, than to risk opening up to someone else, hoping that whatever they felt was strong enough to withstand the hell that I lived in. So I went for the safer option and continued to unknowingly let myself believe that I didn't deserve love and therefore would never get it no matter how badly I wanted it. I don't think he or anyone else for that matter realized just how much I didn't want to feel anything for my crush. I would have done or given anything not to feel what I felt, whether it was changing schools so I wouldn't see him every day or even taking my own life, whatever it took. I wanted to ask him if I ever got the chance, did he really think that if I'd had a choice in it, that I wouldn't have rather let him love me instead of expending so much effort on someone who couldn't?!

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I hate that it makes me realize just how much I missed out on when I was growing up. I hate that all the songs I used to listen to because of how I felt about my crush, now make me think of how the other guy felt about me and that I broke my own heart as well as his by not letting him in, and that ultimately, I can never go back and change it. 

I know that our life paths or journeys were meant to go the way they have and everything has happened for a reason. Even though I don't feel it now, I know that it won't matter as much or at all in time and I'll just be able to finally accept that I mattered to someone when I didn't think or feel it. 

In order to help me process everything I started playing with a deck of tarot cards I have and found that I kept getting the same card about unrequited love, indicating that there wouldn't be enough between us to actually sustain a relationship. I kept going back and forth between the thoughts of 'it would never have worked' and 'we could have made it work' because I believe that despite certain things that I've seen and experienced in my life, love can overcome everything. I figured if he felt as strongly as the psychic told me he felt, then there was every chance I could have reciprocated in time regardless of how hard things were when I was in high school. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out in the end, but at least we would've tried.

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Now that he's grown up and presumably matured, it's kind of like we're on the same page. He knows what responsibility is and maybe he's become a more caring and compassionate in his relationship with his wife. At the same time, when I think of what I felt towards my crush and how in hindsight that was predominantly based on my lack of self worth and self esteem, because now that I have those things I couldn't really care less about him or anyone else that I was drawn to for those reasons. I wonder if his feelings were truer than mine or if they did just disappear with time and insight like mine did.

In a 'what if' daydream, I wonder what it would be like to reunite with him and see what I didn't or couldn't before. To have him look at me in the way that I'd missed all those years ago, the way that only someone completely smitten with another person can, to see how much he's grown and matured as a person and how much of the guy I remember is still there.

As the psychic told me, and everyone else can easily say, you never know what's going to happen in the future and it seems wrong to hold onto some thought or some tiny bit of hope that I was the one for him all along and he did have a chance but he gave up waiting. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it now. It's part of a continued healing process, I know that much. In a weird way I kind of enjoy the misery and sorrow, not just because it renders food meaningless to me ergo, instant diet, (I think I'm also beginning to understand what it feels like to have an eating disorder) but because it's something that I've known so well and for so long. It's like slipping on an old jacket you've had forever. It's familiar. I think that's part, if not the entire reason that I'm hesitant to let this whole thing go so quickly despite how much it hurts. I'm scared of actually letting someone in and loving me in case they too decide to up and leave like so many people have before. If I had taken the risk of opening up and found that it was all a joke like I believed it was, or that whatever he learnt about my life, he would go back to the popular crowd he was part of and tell them, leaving me more exposed than I already felt, I couldn't cope with it. 

I have a lot a really good, fun memories of him, I know that at least proves that he meant something to me or I wouldn't have written them down. That's the person, albeit a more mature one, that I'd like the opportunity to be with. If it didn't work then at least I'd be able to tick it off my list as having tried.

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I think one of the hardest (and unhealthiest) things is seeing pictures of him and his wife on their wedding day and knowing that she gets the things and parts of him I never got an opportunity to see or experience and probably never will.

Sometimes I wonder if he's really and genuinely happy with his life and how things have turned out. Again, I know it's not healthy, but I over-think the fact that neither he nor his wife have many coupley pics on whatever social media accounts of theirs I've been able to find, nor have they updated anything in a while from what I can see from a public view. There's no indication to say that they're unhappy or struggling in married life or whether they just got married because they decided it was about time and not because they were madly in love or anything. I do sort of wish there was though, as bad as it sounds, so I could swoop in and save the day as it were, or more realistically, just imagine myself doing so.

I do want him to be happy, and if he is with her then I'm happy for him (although it kind of makes me sad for me). At the same time, I can't help feeling selfish and guilty for hoping that their marriage doesn't work out as seems to be the case for so many these days, just so I can have the opportunity to make him as happy as I think he deserves to be and that he made me in high school.

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I don't feel like I'm completely ready to let go just yet. Not when there feels like there's so much I still don't know for sure or completely understand, although I may never get the chance to. Just another thing I have to learn to accept. 

I've spent the last few days wallowing in misery and feeling incredibly ill because of it. I just kept replaying everything over and over again and making myself hurt more. Listening to songs which seem to articulate better than I can how I'm feeling or songs that I could imagine myself singing to or at him in the hopes that he'd understand a little bit better. The more songs I find though, the more I wonder if he'd ever really be able to fully understand what life was like for me. In my experience, only people who've been through something similar will be able to comprehend what it's like to go through consistently tough times. 

I posted a status on Facebook to alert whatever friends that would see it that I was having a tough time, a few minutes later a close friend of mine called saying she'd seen it and wanted to check I was okay. She and I talked on the phone for a few hours as I sobbed through everything and read her the summary I'd written at the end of the reading so she understood what the problem was.

She sympathized with me and told me she wished she was there to give me a big hug and told me that I was a lot stronger than I gave myself credit for. She reminded me of the self-love seminar we'd gone to a few months back and how the speaker had said that the experiences we'd gone through are what has made us so compassionate. It was nice to be reminded of one of my better qualities and part of me not so secretly hoped that was an attractive quality to the guy who got away, as well as the fact that I'd written down so many of the things I'd noticed he'd said or done even though I didn't say anything.

I told her I'd made a booking with another psychic I'd seen a few months before and had found her approach quite good too. I wanted to confirm what the first psychic had told me, not that I didn't trust her, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't making a bigger deal of it than it really was. I just wanted to feel better and contemplated scheduling an extra therapy session if the psychic didn't pan out.

The morning of the second reading I woke up feeling incredibly sick to the point where I tried to make myself throw up. I hadn't eaten anything substantial since I'd had the first reading so there was nothing to bring up. I recognized the sick feeling as the same thing I'd felt back on a daily basis in high school, even primary, and for a few years after I graduated. I'd always thought it was extreme anxiety which I knew I suffered from, but it was my self worth or rather lack of, screaming out. I was at the point where I couldn't care less about food, if I had the option of not eating I would've gladly taken it. But I forced myself to eat something if only so I wouldn't pass out or get incredibly dizzy.

When the second reading started, she picked up that I was tired. I told her I hadn't been coping too well since my last reading which is why I was having another one in the hopes that it would make me feel better or at least help a little bit. She kept telling me to be kind to myself and said that the angels wanted me to know that it was okay to feel everything I was feeling and not to beat myself up about it like I was doing. 

She told me which decks she was using and confirmed I was okay with them to which I advised her of the cards I'd been using and told her about the message that kept coming up. She walked me through her way of reading cards and told me what she made of it but told me to keep in mind that the deck that I was using was specific to partners and relationships.

I told her how I interpreted the card but wasn't entirely sure if I was correct and she told me it was all about how I felt in the end. I explained about the reading I'd had and the detail in which the previous psychic had gone into, the next psychic told me the previous one had no right to tell me that much detail given how much it was affecting me now. She said that while she was picking up that there was a guy in high school that really liked me, it wasn't for her to comment on how much so.

She told me I was beating myself up too badly over something I had no control over and couldn't do anything about. I was looking at the situation in hindsight and wondering what I could have done differently, but it was too late to go back and change things and that's okay. It's okay to wonder and question, so long as I didn't let it consume me as it was now and letting my self worth completely plummet.

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I told her I'd been crying and feeling sick since the last reading to which she sympathized and told me it was completely healthy for me and every other human on the planet to have a massive cry every now and again to let all our feelings out in order to cleanse and move on.

She kept reminding me that it only mattered how I was feeling now. I told her I really wanted to let this guy know the truth of the situation, even if it didn't change anything in the long run, at least he'd know and I'd be able to move on. She told me to pretend that he was sitting in front of me and write a letter to him, then burn it because without realizing it I had created a metaphysical connection between the two of us even though he wasn't aware of it. She said that he wasn't thinking about it nearly as much as I was which comforted me to know he was thinking about it at all, and to imagine a cord between our hearts which was then cut to end the connection. She said that she got the feeling he lived far away from me, that he and I were completely different people to who we were back then, that we have different wants, needs and expectations and that if we were meant to be together back then, we would've been, and if we were meant to be together in the future, we would be, but she really felt that he wasn't the one for me, despite the fact that he's married.

She told me that she saw 2 people coming up and she was concerned that while I was investing so much energy into thinking about it and wondering what might have been, I'd completely miss out on them. I told her I wasn't really concerned about being in a relationship, aside from the physical stuff like holding hands and cuddling, I was okay without one. She told me it was because for the most part things were going pretty well for me.

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I told her it was still a lot to take in and process and I felt like it was going to take a while to do so. She told me it was okay and to stop being so hard on myself, to let myself feel whatever I needed to feel and then move on when I was ready.

She said my biggest focus right now was on me and making myself feel better, that I needed to take time out to have some fun and do things that remind me of what it was like to be a carefree child. She reminded me of the homework tasks she wanted me to do. To write a list of 10 things I'm grateful for, they could be as simple or elaborate as I wanted, to write a list of things that I want to happen this year and to write the guy a letter in order to purge my feelings.

She also told me to be proud of the fact that I'd gotten through my first year of uni and was about to start my second since she knew so many people that dropped out in the first year. She also felt that I didn't stop to take pride in my accomplishments but I should really do so because it was all a celebration of me and how awesome I am. 

I told her I knew I should but I'd spent so much time just sitting around waiting for life to happen, and that I didn't have any control over it, so now that I can do everything, I want to rush off and do just that. She told me she knew that I wouldn't stop thinking about the whole situation so she wasn't going to tell me to, but just to take it easy with myself. She also said she felt the reason I wanted to be with him was because it's familiar, and it's easy. I know with him I wouldn't have to try so hard because he'd already be bringing so much to the plate to start with. I knew she had a point, but it didn't stop me wondering about it.

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I'm still not completely sure how or what I feel about it, but I know that taking the time to sit and wallow has helped. It's tired me out from thinking about it so intensely, the same thoughts going around in my head for days back to back to the point where nothing else gets done, it's exhausting.

I know there's enough to cover for at least my next therapy session, but I also know that I've figured out for myself what I needed to know regardless of how hard or emotional the journey was to find it.

So I guess for now, I just need to let myself gradually accept the fact that it'll probably always be just a 'what if?'.

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