What I’m about to tell you may come as somewhat of a shock. You’re not going to want to believe me at first. You’ll find it unimaginable, impossible. You’ll think of the subcutaneous pudge on your belly and the way you wheeze when you get to laughing really hard, and you’ll think I’m full of hot air. You’re used to being placated. So many people have answered your doubts with empty assurances, so I understand why what I’m going to say might ring with a certain insincerity, but please, do your best to hear me out. This proclamation is anything but empty.

Someone is in love with you.

No, seriously.

This person isn’t a stranger you passed on the sidewalk the other day whose heart twitched when they saw your face, an intense but superficial attraction. This is someone who knows your name, who’s written it in the margins of their notebook, on the corner of a napkin they will shove deep into their coat pocket, in the fine patina of dust on a windowsill.

This is someone who knows you well. Maybe they’re your neighbor, the one who lives just across the street and always rubs the back of his neck when he sees you. Maybe they’re the grave young woman who sits behind you and a little to the right in your psychology lecture, the one who refuses to give you her notes until the very last moment. Maybe they’re a very dear friend, who furtively watches when you leave a room; wistful, wanting.

Whoever it is, they cannot stop thinking about you. You’ve woven yourself into the very fiber of their consciousness and now they cannot take a single step without thinking how empty their footfalls sound without yours. Their head is swimming with a billion details of you. That quick pat on the shoulder you gave them last Tuesday, the hot inadvertent brush of the back of your hand against the bare skin of their forearm, the open smile you flash them each time they act endearingly idiotic.

While you’ve been worrying about slippery things like the future and why you can’t get yourself together and how to get out of bed when you want to die, this person has been falling steadily, thoroughly in love with you.

While the first thing you see in your reflection is a profoundly mediocre person with a measly list of successes to your name, they look at you and see something miraculous. You make their heart pound so hard they fear it will knock them over. You make all the blood rush to their cheeks, a hot and glaring and embarrassingly obvious tip-off of their feelings for you.

And god, they can’t reverse it. They can’t. Regardless of the pain they feel when they remind themselves their adoration will never be two-sided, regardless of that awful sting that comes from jumping to the very worst conclusion—from being human—they can’t extricate you from themselves. You’ve all but engulfed them.

Don’t look so stunned. You’re far more valued than you could imagine and this is for good reason. Don’t disregard your intelligence and humor, you modesty and courage, your compassion and veracity. Don’t. You have been so preoccupied with perfection that you don’t realize just how beguiling you are, how beautiful.

Let me repeat myself: Right now, right now, there is someone so in love with you they can’t breathe right. They’ve loved you for a long time, through a heck of a lot, and they are trying as hard as they can to hide their desire for you, but it’s getting trickier every day.

They are waiting for you to realize, to understand that their fingers beg to be tangled with yours, that when you laugh in the way only you can, head thrown back like some red-lipped angel, they want to rest their forehead against yours, kiss you, and kiss you again.

All I can do is tell you to lift your eyes, finally, and see.