How to find Love - Chapter 6 - Maillove101

I will be honest it’s currently Sunday afternoon, the same Sunday afternoon that this is already supposed to be here in front of you. This week was a crazy one, full of travel, annoying workplace requests, a beautiful country wedding and the general wildness that comes when your whole family is in one room. It’s lucky that this story, the story of my first love; yes I said love, comes easily. So easy that it felt like it happened yesterday. 

I started year 8 with the same curiosity for love as my year 7 self. Pizzalove101 was in another syndicate, far away, the last flicker of hope removed as everyone was invited to watch as he and this blonde beauty shared their first hug. I was resolved, no, I was eager to move on. It just happened that moving on had a name, brown hair, great soccer skills and an ability to take my 12 year old breath away. His name was maillove101 and he was beautiful. 

I remember the early days of settling into the class, room 6, I was unsure if my heart could take another heartbreak. It was the days of Keith Urban Sunday drives around eastbourne screaming “I could love someone like you” my dad unaware that I had a very real potential boy on the other end of my often dramatic gazes out of the window. To say I fell for him and country music at the same time would not be a lie. It was also the age of farmville and pretending to be 26 on facebook. I would water my plants listening to Daniel Bedingfield and dreaming of the day that I would fall in love and leave Upper Hutt. It was a pure time, a hopeful time, I was believing that mail would be everything to me that these singers also craved. 

There was one key difference between pizza and mail, that was mail actually seemed to want to be my friend. We hung out at lunch, playing soccer, again me in my wisdom believing that aggression on the field would lead to an attraction off it. I thought that I had struck absolute gold when he happened to start biking the same route to school and back. I often begged Terriann and Kelsey to leave slightly earlier each morning so that we could conveniently run into each other. I even learnt how to do some tricks on my bike, standing on my seat with one leg in the air, holding my handle bars, I was convinced that my bike ballerina skills would secure his interest. It was at the same time I also got really into picking up rubbish and would often arrive at school with several plastic bags and cardboard boxes hanging off my handlebars. I co-founded a recycling programme at school, got involved in drama classes and really started becoming me. 

One day, a bully told me I had weird hair. I decided that if she thought my hair was weird I’d give her something to talk about. I wore my hair with one more ponytail everyday until I needed 24 hair ties to make it happen, putting on my bike helmet involved some serious maneuvering. Eventually she got the message, she wasn’t messing with me. I know Mail found this courage to be both intimidating and attractive, he told me so. His words were “Wow Emma, you’re really weird but I like it.” I liked that though, even in my incredibly vulnerable state that often involved hours of tears, poetry and feeling like I was the worst I also knew that being myself was the best thing I could be. 

The thing that really changed the level of our relationship came to me as an ample opportunity. Our teacher announced there was to be a running club, run by none other than Mail himself. All you had to do to be put in was fail the beep test, badly. Did I set out to fail on purpose? Yes. When we actually came to, did I fail because I was actually unfit? Also yes. I landed myself fifteen minutes with Mail every morning. Fifteen minutes of pure running but fifteen minutes nonetheless. Did running club lead to the beginning of our relationship and the start of my running career? No - I think I will let the diary entry from that time speak for itself. 

From the diary of 12 year old Emma - I have left the original spelling for effect. 

“Today was the worst day of my life. I mean that REALLY I MEAN THAT. Runing club was supposed to be the beginning of something beutiful but argghhh I ruined it…..again. We were busey running around the block as normz when I felt the feeling. The period feeling. Cramps hit me out of nowhere and I really did keep trying to run. BUT it was hard. Sooo hard. Mail said ‘keep going Emma, come on’ as I bent over. I really did want to make him proud but aunt flo came. I kept running but had to stop again. He was looking so disappointed. ‘Come on Emma you were doing so well’ I felt so angry at him because he didn’t undiestand. I yelled at him “I HAVE CRAMPS, THE RED RIVER IS FLOWING” he went brite red and ran off. I felt so embraced and when I got back to class everyone knows what had happened. I don’t think I can fix this one. Ugh. I’m sorry mail. 

He legit never quite looked at me the same. He no longer wanted to hang out at lunch or associate with me. I managed to gain back a tiny piece of credit when I correctly guessed the winners of the 2011 FIFA World Cup but apart from that I was toast. I remember the pool party in year 8, standing there on the side of H20 in my togs, feeling self conscious and wishing that he would sign my leavers book. He did. He left his number. I was over the moon. 

Flash forward 17 days and I got my very first cell phone, New Years eve at about 11:39 he had the honour of receiving the first text I had ever sent. It read “It’s New Years eve send this to 7 people you care about, if they care about you they’ll send it back.” He replied five days later on my birthday. Felt like christmas all over again - I asked him what his New Year's resolution was. He told me it was to kiss 100 girls. I asked if I could be one of them and that’s the last time I ever heard from him.

You’ve always got to shoot your shot I say. I left pieces of me at that school, with those two boys, and I only have a surprisingly small amount of regret.

Until next week. 

Unapologetically, 

Emma