She looked me in the eye and I averted my eyes because I was too shy to look at her. You must be wondering who I am talking about and what it is all about. Then let’s start from the beginning. It was the time when I was in grade 10. I had a crush on a girl; she was just a normal girl with dreams and a good heart. I never knew how I got so much in love with her. So much so that every time I think about her even now I smile and cry at the same time, but it is how it is.

I remember the first time I saw her. She was sitting in the library, engrossed in a book. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, but the moment she looked up, I quickly looked away, my heart racing. And let me tell you for a fact that I got to a point where I visibly used to cry my eyes out at night, listening to songs, just imagining marrying her, having kids with her, living my peaceful life. But you know, some things that you want from your heart you never get. Sure, they teach you to be hardy in life but it is ducking unfair. Another reason was my lack of confidence and my scaredy behavior.

There was this one time during a school trip when I almost gathered the courage to talk to her. We were both sitting by the campfire, the night sky dotted with stars. But just as I was about to say something, my throat dried up and all I could manage was a weak smile. See, I would even fight death for her, but the thing is I never wanted her to have the insecurity that I have associated with me. In simple words, I was poor.

And do you know the reason why? Yeah, simple enough to guess. My father was poor, drank a lot, sold his house, and we were living in a rented apartment where I always used to hear my parents arguing with the landlord or between each other. So yeah, I wasn't too optimistic about myself and it bled into me not being able to show my emotions much. See, due to that I focused my attention on math which was an outlet for some of my emotions, and I got some pretty good teachers who taught me pretty well about life. The one thing that he said still sticks to me to this day.

He told me, "Boy, you can have as much money as you want because it is nothing but numeric value, but the maturity and the genius mind you have here (*pointing at my head) is not something people can buy anywhere, and you should never ever suppress your emotions but control them." The previous few things he said about me being a genius, I never took to heart because my mom always used to tell me that, so I thought everyone says that just for the sake of it. But the last few sentences resonated with me in a weird way, which I later came to understand.

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Oh, have I told you about myself? I guess I haven't. Well, here I am, a man around 32 years old with average looks and a good head, named Sherry. Now let me tell you why those last few sentences stuck with me till this day after I graduated from 10th grade. Well, till the end I didn't say anything to her. She may even have forgotten about me.

And I met that teacher in grade eleven. After a few days of contemplation, I had a fuse go off in my mind. I didn't care about anything other than earning loads of money. I was at that time around 16/17 years old and I always used to get a scholarship for my studies due to some competition or things like that, so studying wasn't a burden for my parents or me.

I came to understand the difference between control of emotion and suppression of emotion. Let's say there is someone cursing you all the time, beating you up just for fun, and even humiliating you in public. Say you somehow got a gun all the time and he doesn't and wouldn't be able to wield it. So what would you think of such a person who didn't use it and went through all the hardship? Foolish, right? And what about the one who shot that "bad" person, due to which he is serving jail? Foolish, right?

Now, what about someone who just used the gun as a deterrent and beat him up a bit so that he doesn't do anything funny. Well, now we are talking. See, that simple it is. A person suppressing emotions all the time becomes pretty null to anything concerning himself, even if humiliating, and a person not having control of it becomes easy to trick and use by others. So always control it and not suppress it.

I also remember one night when I was sitting on the rooftop of our apartment, looking at the moon. My back was hurting, a constant very, very dull pain specifically on both of my shoulder blades with red rashes from time to time. But it didn't affect my daily life in any way because it wasn't much really. I thought about all the things that could have been and all the things that were, realizing that while pain was a part of my life, it didn't have to define me. That was when I truly understood the value of controlling my emotions and not letting them suppress my spirit.