Loving someone who never saw me

I’ve always been the kind of girl who keeps her heart close, guarded, cautious, like a secret I wasn’t sure the world could handle. I didn’t believe in fairytales or sudden sparks.

Love to me, was supposed to be earned, built, and nurtured. But then he came along, and all of that changed. Not because he was perfect. Not because he swept me off my feet. He didn’t even know he was the exception. But somehow, without even trying, he became the one I couldn’t forget.

We met in middle school (third year to be exact). Just kinds in uniform, sharing classrooms and echoes of laughter in the corridors. We sat in the same room, on the same benches, day after day, and slowly, he became more than a face in the crowd. At first, I noted the small things: how his eyes flickered with mischief during a boring lecture, how he’d pretend not to care about grades but quietly panic when results were near. There was a quiet vulnerability in him, something soft he never showed on purpose. That’s what drew me in.

I didn’t fall for him all at once. It wasn’t some cinematic cliché moment of realization. It happened quietly, over time. In the way I started saving my notes just in case he forgot his. In how I memorized his schedule better than mine, just to be available when he needed help. In the way I paid attention when others didn’t; when he was tired, when he was down, when he was pretending everything was fine. My love didn’t come in grand gestures. It came in little acts of loyalty, small sacrifices, silent care.

He never asked me to love him, not once, but I did. Fully, willingly. And maybe foolishly. I knew, deep down, that he didn’t feel the same. Not really. Not in the way I needed him to. But he let me stay close. Close enough to hope. And that’s the thing—hope is the most dangerous kind of love. It keeps you hanging on to scraps, reading too much into glances and half smiles, thinking maybe—just maybe—he will see you the way you see him.

But he didn’t.

He saw convenience. Help. Support. Someone to rely on, but never someone to fight for. I did everything for him—not because I wanted I wanted something in return, but because I couldn’t help it. I was always there. I gave when I had little left for myself. I lifted him up when no one else even noticed he was falling. And still, I was never enough to be chosen.

The worst part? He knew. He knew what I felt. Maybe bot in the beginning, but eventually, there’s no way he didn’t see it. And still. He kept taking. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t protect my heart. He just let me give and give until there was nothing left to offer.

One day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I gathered what courage I had—my voice shaky, heart pounding—and told him how I felt. I told him I knew he was using me. That I was tired of pretending it didn’t hurt. And he looked at me, not with shock, not with anger—but with quiet guilt.

He said “you are right. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you.” That’s all. No apology. No explanation. Just calm admission, as if honesty could somehow undo the damage it had allowed to grow.

And then he asked me—unbelievably—to stay. As the same “friend”. As someone who could still be there, still do all the same things. I wish I hadn’t? but I did. Because when your heart is that invested letting go feels like cutting off a limb. You will do anything just to stay close, even if it hurts.

But things changed he started pulling away. Not dramatically, but slowly. The messages got shorter. The conversations faded. His voice, once familiar, began to feel like something from a memory. And then, one afternoon, I saw him. He was walking down the street with a girl—holding her hand and laughing.

And that’s when it hits me: it was never about timing, or confusion, or not being ready.

He just didn’t want me. And I stood there, watching them, realizing that I had never even be a chapter in his story—just a footnote. A helper. A placeholder. I was the girl who made things easier for him… never the girl who made his heart skip a beat.

That night, I didn’t cry like in the movies. I didn’t scream or fall apart. I just lay there—eyes open, staring at the ceiling—and thought about every moment I gave to someone who barely looked at me. I remembered the late nights helping him study, the way I celebrated his small wins like they were mine, the endless patience, the quiet heart breaks. And I felt something shift inside me.

Not bitterness. Not even sadness.

Just exhaustion. A deep, aching tiredness of loving people who only know how to take. Of being the girl who’s always there, always loyal, always invisible.

Maybe one day he will think of me. Not with regret, exactly, but with hollow kind of wondering. Maybe he’ll realize, in a quiet moment, what he had and let go. Maybe he’ll remember the girl who stayed up for him, who chose him over and over, even when he never chose her back. And maybe then, in that silence, he’ll feel a little of what I felt for years.

But that’s not my story anymore. And that changes everything…