Love Me: The Manoir

This Is What Happens When You Fall Hopelessly in Love

"I think Caitlin likes me," I remember noting to a friend one day.

"She's just flirty to everyone, don't think much of it," my friend, Rose, would go on to tell me.

This observation is one I wish I had never made. Then again, it's one of the most important observations in my life. Let me give you some context. In sixth form, I had acquired many new friends and among them was a girl called Caitlin. She gave the best hugs anyone could possibly do, would often provide her undivided attention, and in general flirted like a professional.

Once I had observed this behaviour, I couldn't let it shift from my mind. I felt like a stuck record because every day I would notice lots of other little things. Maybe she would brush my arm ever so slightly. Pick me out of everyone to go and run an errand with her. Say something oddly suggestive.

To this day, I have no idea whether my infatuation with her was born out of something genuine or simply because I thought she liked me, but I fell hopelessly in love.

And I mean Love, with a capital L.

It was one of those things that crept up on me slowly, and then all of a sudden, I would find myself possessive over her. One study period in particular springs to mind where I went home early because she wasn't paying me attention. The problem with having a crush on someone at school – one of your best friends – is that you can't possibly escape it. And therefore, it grows into a beast.

"I think I'm in love with Caitlin," I blurted out drunkenly at a part in February, two friends becoming my confidants.

Apparently, this was one hell of a shock. There is a huge difference between feeling something inside, and actually saying it out loud. The minute I said it out loud it became very real, like a hot flame which was now circling me at all times. By saying those words out loud, they were cemented in truth.

I was in love, and soon everyone around me found out some way or another. It was one of the best kept secrets of any sixth form group, and for my friends I am eternally thankful. I must have been a drag for the sixth months than ensued because I was most certainly always crying somewhere about the pains of unrequited love.

She took my aside one day for a walk – a way we often passed time in sixth form – and began a convoluted intro to a secret she had been holding. I held my breath as my stomach churned, wondering if maybe she was going to confess the very same feelings which were plaguing me. I mean, she did do this in a sort of way. It's just instead of confessing her painful love for me, she began to vent about her love for another girl – one of our friends.

I've learnt how to control my face when my soul feels like shrivelling up and dying, but even my well perfected façade couldn't stop the faltering of my face as she said these words. It didn't matter though, her mind was evidently somewhere else and I was forced to continue our walk giving her advice about where to go next.

"You two have a special connection though," I remember two friends telling me as I sat in a tree (the context of this is not important), "I see the way she looks at you, there is something between you."

I'd hear this a lot, and as much as I know they were saying it make me feel better, this only prolonged the pain. Hope is a very dangerous thing, and when placed into something like a false idol it can drag out pain for so long that it consumes you.

I became a sad drunk. I was that girl sat under the kitchen table at a party clutching a bottle of wine in my hand as I cried and lamented my unrequited love. She became my only source of happiness, the only person I ever wanted to spend any time with.

Every day one of my friends would try and shake me from my own sadness, telling me that if I just told her I would get some form of closure. But the idea of telling her seemed so foreign and out of reach that I would always just shake my head. It terrified me. My own words and thoughts made me want to crawl into a cave and not resurface. And so I wrapped myself in sadness and accepted my fate – I was not made for love.