Bees, Venom, and Love for a Boy

My first bee sting wasn't all it was hyped up to be. Okay, hear me out. I mean seriously, this is it? I think the worst part wasn't the initial pain, it was the fear that I had been stung by a god-forsaken bee. I was like 8. It was a summer of avoiding group sports at all costs, but happily playing with toads, selling lemonade, and escaping to any and all available shade. I'd been told my whole life that the first thing you do in this terrifying situation, is remove the stinger. So 8 year old me, who was rolling around in a field by the way, stood up, grabbed onto my quickly swelling arm, and looked for the nearest camp- counselor. Meanwhile, I was pushing back tears and wiping away snot because the bees weren't as nice as the toads or the dandelions. Under the safety of a nearby pavilion, the counselor removed the stinger, popped on a Band-Aid, and that was pretty much it. Oh, besides me hyperventilting of course.

Okay so I started thinking that secrets, they're like bee stingers right? If you let a secret sink in and stay, it will eventually make you sick. I had to look this up; what's so bad about the stinger anyway? I'll settle it right here and now for you. Basically if you leave the stinger in, you get a much higher dose of the venom released into your body. You'll eventually be fine, but it's going to be much more painful.

My secret is about a boy. This is a boy who has loved me for as long as I can remember. Before you get too sentimental, nothing ever happened because I always turned him down. We were inseperable best friends for years. The truth is: I loved him too. Okay well maybe I just loved him in a different way? Nope. I've had feelings for him equally, for as long as I can remember. My secret is that I loved him too but I was terrified. The idea of giving into all those feelings was always too scary. And somehow in all the no's I gave him, the truth got completely lost.

It's years later now and I think we're both trying to figure out what happened. I realize that I took how I felt about him, and buried it as deep as I possibly could. Now, all I'm left with is guilt and no freaking good excuses. I read that bee stingers are barbed, that's why it can be so difficult to get them out. Well I think secrets are barbed too. It figures, because God-knows they hang on tight.

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