When I was in sixth grade, I thought I was in love. I also thought that my life would be over if this boy discovered I had feelings for him. Love, back then, involved a lot of hiding. 

My friend Julia had the idea to invent aliases for the boys we had crushes on. That way, we could talk about them, right in front of their chubby little faces, and they would never know. Julia’s codename for the boy she liked was “Red”. “He wore a red shirt yesterday” was her reasoning. “Red” actually discovered her crush on him two weeks later and made his reciprocated feelings known. Julia told him that they should just be friends.

We named my boy after the fruit my mom packed in my lunchbox. From then on, Ryan was no longer Ryan. “Nectarine” sounded more poetic anyway.

I brought up the aliases with Julia last week, when we were on our way to dinner. “I saw [Red] driving around a few days ago.” She replies, laughing a bit. “He’s so weird now.” Living in a small town that never changes, many of us know details about our old crushes' lives. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Our conversation segued into our current relationships (or in my case, lack thereof). When I hear Julia talk about her boyfriend, about the good and bad layers of their relationship, it occurs to me that dating is very different from what I believed as a child. My recent experiences have reinforced that notion. The world of love is far more intense than little me could have ever predicted.

Ryan was a quality guy: smart, sweet, funny. Super uncomplicated, I now realize, and the total opposite of the type of guys I like now. There’s a trend of conflict and need for excitement in my relationships that I probably won’t confront until my mid-twenties. My working theory is that it's because I get bored easily. Surprising, considering I nursed my crush on Ryan for nearly two years. 

One of the things I miss about young love is its simplicity. We needed less; sitting beside Ryan on the field trip bus was enough interaction to last me weeks. Ryan didn’t understand the impact he had on me, by teaching me how to play iPod games. Julia convinced me after that this meant he was almost obsessed with me. I mean, he had to touch my hand and look over my shoulder. Sixth grade was all about the blind leading the blind. Everything now is complicated. This was a time before drama in relationships became appealing. We idolized Prince Charmings, not the slow burn or the thrill of the chase. And don’t even get me started on hookup culture. You hook up first, and then they decide if they like you enough to date you. I can’t pinpoint the moment when liking a boy switched from sitting beside them on a bus to hoping that after you expose yourself completely, they’ll text you back.

Another friend of mine recently confided in me at a party about his newest romantic endeavour. I’ve found that lately, I can only stomach conversations about love when holding a bottle of tequila. It’s a comfort thing. “We’re not dating, though.” He made very clear, after forty minutes of dissecting their interactions. The thing is, he’d been in this situationship for five months. It was enough to make me say “Romance is officially dead.” and mean it. I could picture the girl, hoping that those months she spent falling for my friend, the commitment-phobe, wouldn’t be a waste. I would have given up after one month, maybe two, so I respected her perseverance. I understood why she was still fighting for it. I used to fight harder. After all the late night food grabs, talks in bed, and walks by the lake at dusk, it’s heartbreaking to come to the conclusion that all those intimate moments will amount to nothing. That never used to bother us, though. When we were young, we expected less from each other. Having a crush was so all-consuming, there was almost no need for it to turn into something more. Nothing ever came from my infatuation with Ryan, but there were plenty of moments for me to imagine what our relationship would be like. At the time, that was more than enough.

Maybe the biggest appeal of young love is its privacy. There was romance in keeping secrets, in guarding a name. Julia and I went through the effort of creating aliases, just to keep our feelings undetected. Ryan never knew I liked him, and I preferred it that way. Recently, privacy appears to be an element that is sorely absent. It seems that putting your heart on the line is required and feeling at ease is a luxury not often afforded.

I slow danced with Ryan twice at elementary school graduation. The other kids were swaying flatly, like zombies, but Ryan twirled me around and actually sang to the songs. Looking back, I doubt he ever liked me the way I liked him, but it doesn’t really matter. The feelings and memories were all happy, which is more than I can say about my latest efforts in love. There are some elements of romance then that have withstood the years. The pining, the planning, and even sometimes the flirting. The taste of young love lingers. It is just barely stronger than the bitterness of disappointment. That might be why we haven’t completely given up. It’s the same way we can taste the ocean even when we’re not at the beach. The feelings and flavours are seared into our minds, burned with core memories and moments of innocent love. I think I’ll try to get back to those moments. Maybe all I need to be in a mature relationship is to treat relationships like I did when I was eleven.

Illustration by Jena Williams