Dear Flash Sentry,
Graduations are coming, high school is ending, and the path for every CHS student will soon be diverging for everyone. Some will leave the city for universities, some will already search for work, some will stick to their family business, but most importantly, relationships will be changing, and friendships might be divided.
So what is the time one spends during high school? Just a memory one gets? Does it shape the future? How much part of the life’s path does it decide? How much does it decide for future relationships?
What’s the point of my questions, you might ask, and honestly, I might ask this myself too. Is this hope? Hope for what, you might ask, to which I will cover in fear and tell a tale; a tale where a human saw a treasure on a table, and while it had never belonged to one, the human assumed it was taken, didn’t want to be a thief and missed the opportunity to be happy.
I don’t know what I’m rambling; all I know is that my hand is shaking while writing these words, that I try to prolong the moment the truth will be written out on this paper. I hate it. All these years, all the moments we passed each other, I developed a fear of you. I try to act normal, try to not stare at you, but I can’t ignore your presence whenever I have noticed you. All my thoughts start to turn only about you, how I just need to walk to you and hope for the best, but I panic and act as if nothing is happening, while I had always loved you.
Here, I wrote it. I do. I… If you only knew how much I want to just stop writing this letter, crumble the paper, rip it in pieces and throw it away, that your precious blue eyes wouldn’t need to read these three words of this unnoticeable girl, unable to stand up to her own feelings.
But now it’s written out, now you know the truth. I love you, Flash Sentry. The moment I saw you stand up to Sunset Shimmer and broke up with her, I fell in love with you. You know how manipulative she was, how much she had everything in control, but you chose to face her revenge and stick to your morality. We girls know when a girl is attractive, and Sunset was and still is one of the best looking in our school. Don’t deny it, even in our yearbook Sunset got ranked first in the most beautiful, to Rarity’s dismay.
But you chose to ignore that. You were able to break out of Sunset’s grasp and not partake in her terror, and I admired it. I wished to be like you, to be with you, but I feared her. Trust me, many girls didn’t approach you back then, as everyone feared Sunset’s wrath of trying to snitch her ex-boyfriend.
Then Princess Twilight happened. She was a blessing to our school. She put down Sunset, but took you away. And then she left you.
You believe that no one saw your sighs, your letters you wrote during class, but threw away in the bin; how you looked at the statue and put your hands on it, hoping that one day, it’d be opened and the girl of your dreams would come through it.
I did. I know I shouldn’t have taken the letters you threw away from the bins and read them, but I did. Me, being the immature, hopeless girl, imagined that these words were written for me. I imagined how one day, you’d find me as beautiful as the Princess and use these wonderful, poetic lyrics of songs on me.
I did this to myself. Knowing how much you did for this girl, how romantic you could be with words, it made my fear of rejection only bigger. You wrote how soft and smooth her hair is, but what are my ransacked yellow hairs compared to hers? You wrote of her purple eyes, that remind you of the night sky you like to watch, but my golden eyes are nothing like that—and I know you have trouble looking into my eyes.
Please don’t panic! I know that some get freaked out over my strabismus, or just get confused on which eye to look at, and you were always someone who tried to be as nice as possible—and panicked whenever you feared you might offend someone. It was always funny seeing you stress out when you talked to me, changing your focus on the different eyes, but then reality overtook to remind me that this would stay for you like that forever. You feared to remind me of my condition, and I feared that you'd know nothing more of me than that.
I could have changed it. I could have spoken to you normally, made you feel comfortable around me, but all I saw was you wishing for the Princess to return, and I was too nice letting you mourn her. Did I seriously expect for you to notice me? You, Flash Sentry, guitarist and leader of your own band, owning his own car, could become the boyfriend of Sunset Shimmer, a girl many boys fought for; you caught the eye of the Princess of another world, so what am I in comparison? You played in a different league, one I had to know to not try to be part of, but I acted as if I had a chance.
And my rejection became inevitable. I waited too long, and then the Princess returned, Sunset became popular and you hoped to get either of them.
I patted your shoulder with a smile when you had to deal with our Twilight, but I was crying on the inside. You, Flash Sentry, could talk back with a reformed Sunset Shimmer. Gone was my chance. I had wished at that moment that Sunset would just return to her evil roots, just so you could be mine—a selfish wish.
I didn’t know what to feel. I still can’t accept how you still had chances with her. You had everything a girl could only hope for, and what could I offer? Don’t men want beautiful women? Isn’t it in the genes to watch out for the most healthy and fit woman to get the best offspring, hence the watchout for a perfect look? What had I to offer? Sunset, the mature, beautiful girl, excelling in fitness, smartness, talents, but I? A clumsy girl that seems illiterate due to difficulties reading with my lazy eye, a possible strabismus that could be given to my future children. If I truly loved you, I should let you get the best chances for your future kids, and I did—not out of love, but out of fear of rejection.
I appear nice, but I am egoistical. I didn’t care for your future, I wanted you to be mine. If I knew that you’d accept me, I’d ask you out immediately and rip you from the grip of beauty Sunset had you in. The only thing that had me in control was the knowledge that you never knew most of me, and that I didn’t have the purple eyes of the sky, where the stars could be seen, the smooth hair of a soft cloud one could fall in, and the knowledge of thousands of books, which you could listen to endlessly. Who had the world on her shoulders? Who had full, fiery hair, a talent in drawing, the smartness, cleverness and the redemption arc like in a movie? Who did you admire for how empathic she became, how she said that her past is not today? It was either pretending that one day you’d approach me, or be certain that I had no chance.
It became an unhealthy obsession of mine. I daydreamed around you, I imagined how you’d fall on your knees and ask me out, I imagined how you’d write a song for me, but then you wrote a song for the Equestria girls. Even worse, you helped Sunset during the fight. Where were you when I ran away from the magically possessed robot? Where were you when I was covering in fear, unable to defend myself from it?
You see how stupid I am? You see how irrationally I think? I have built a fantasy world, where I pretended I deserved you to be mine, and then failed to notice how it became something I wished to remain a possibility and clinged on to it no matter what. I was the one who brought myself into a dead end, failing to see how I missed my chance for getting a chance with you. I was the one who stopped loving you for who you were, but who I imagined you to be. Did I even love you anymore? Or did I fell in love with someone I wanted you to be?
There is a special word you boys fear, the “friendzone”. Am I right? Didn’t Sunset see you as nothing more than a friend? Don’t act as if you never wished to turn your platonic relationship into more, Sunset may not have noticed the meanings in the songs you wrote, but I did. I understood it, as I could have sung the song for you too, but I didn’t. And here we are now, where the path of life is going to separate us.
There was also one mistake I made, which took all my hope of getting you. I asked about my counterpart, and then about yours.
They don’t know each other, and they represent us perfectly.
What do you even know of me? We are in the chemistry club together, but what can I do there besides blowing stuff up? Do you know anything of me besides the clumsy muffin girl who patted your shoulders twice?
And what do I even know of you? Do I even know who Flash Sentry is, besides a high school boy who had all the chances with any girl, but chose those from other worlds and failed? What else do I know besides that you’re in a band and own a car? I don’t even know how you normally speak, what jokes you like, what you like to eat, what you do besides playing in your band. For me, you became a knight on a white horse, who I wished to take me into his arms and ride away into his castle—a fairytale I wanted you to stay as.
For me, the highschool, the part of my life will be the one I will hate to remember, not because of you, but because of me. Because of all the mistakes I did, because of the imaginary world I lived in, because of how I feared and loved you.
I loved what you could’ve done, how you would have sung about me, but I feared that you’d turn me away, and then I feared that you’d notice my strange behaviour around you and then think I’m a weird girl and then avoid me and…
I hate these past four years. I hate how I love you. I hate how I fear you. I hate how my tears are falling down my cheeks, wetting the paper I’m writing this letter on. I hate how I know me well enough that I won’t be able to give this letter to you, how I would say goodbye to you one final time and our paths would go different ways, never to be crossed again.
To me, you are everything I wanted, but for you, I’m just a clumsy girl you were uncomfortable with talking to. This will be how you’ll remember me, and this will eat me up until one day, hopefully, I’ll build an imaginary world with another guy.
You did nothing wrong. It was me who pretended, it was me who refused to open up and do the necessary steps, but forgive me for my stupid, egoistical feelings of giving you the fault. Who am I to be noticed, anyway?
I wish you all the best. Get a beautiful wife, get a happy family, a great job, live a fulfilled life. As for me, I hope that my feelings will be gone, and I’ll remember the past as me being just an immature high school girl, who had to deal with puberty, hormones and the lack of self esteem she had during that time.
Best regards,
Derpy Hooves
