Frog Hunting: My First Broken Heart

I went to that church and Sunday school class because of my best friend. That was the Kosher, acceptable reason and the conscious reason I let my mind dwell on. 

But the real reason was because I had a crush on a boy and he went to that church. 

Even though I didn’t want anyone to know and I would Never admit that a boy influenced my place of worship, I secretly hoped we’d fall in love, get married in this same church, and it would be one of those epic church romances everyone talked about for ages. 

I held onto this hope for over a year, until the fateful day I sat across the table from my BFF at a restaurant in the same building as the place where I was working. Just when I’d gotten up the courage to tell her I was crushing on this boy, her face fell. 

That’s not the reaction I was hoping to illicit, I thought.

With trembling voice, my best friend told me that my crush had asked her out. It happened just that week. As my stomach dropped and I felt my face going pale, she told me she’d left things unsettled with him. She didn’t know if she wanted to go out with him. She wasn’t even sure she liked him. 

That was my moment. I jumped in and stumbled around, trying to convince her to tell him no. 

She shrugged. She didn’t know. She hadn’t decided. 

I wanted to scream, “I just told you I liked this boy and I never tell you about boys. Don’t you know what a big deal this is!” 

But she wrung her hands and deliberated as she would deliberate over any boy who’d asked her out. I simmered in frustration at her insensitivity. 

Following dinner, I returned to my office. I promptly went to the bathroom, sank to the ground against the locked door, and cried tears for my first ever broken heart. 

Several minutes later, I left the bathroom. I’d dried my tears as best I could. I took a seat on one of the couches in the common area and pulled out my computer. 

“Are you okay, Katherine?” It was my coworker. I most certainly did not want to talk about boy woes with my coworker. But he was looking at me with such a depth of concern, as if he thought someone might have hurt me and he might need to go punch that someone on my behalf.

“I’m fine,” I assured him. But he didn’t seem convinced. 

That’s when I began to learn a time-tested truth: attraction and romance often sneaks up from the most unexpected places.