The Friend zone is a dark terrible place that most people have been to. I should know I am the king down there. You are banished to the friend zone when the person you have a crush on does not reciprocate the same feelings for you. Unlike the common stereotype of only guys being sent to the friend zone girls can also feel the same frustration. I was first friend zoned in the 7th grade. It was my first year at junior high and I barely knew anybody but then I saw Emaly. I had known her because she was in my 5th grade class and she looked stunning. We talked and became good friends. A couple months later around Halloween I finally mustered the courage to ask her out. It didn’t end well. She yelled my name in surprise and ran away. The next day she said she just wanted to be friends. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I was banished to the friend zone multiple times during the 8th grade. This was mostly small stuff, but there was one friend zone that hit me so hard I still have nightmares to this day. Just after Christmas break and Second semester was starting and all our classes had changed. I walked into health to see a girl I slightly befriended before the break, Whitney. We actually got to sit together and we became great friends. We had a lot in common. We liked the same shows read the same books and we both got super obsessed over stuff. I knew she was a big fan of Harry Potter. In the two weeks before Valentine’s Day I carved her a wand out of wood and polished it. To finish it off I burned into it a question asking her out. All of my friends thought it was an amazing gesture and she would surely say yes, they were all wrong. At lunch after I had given her the gift, she sent her friend (not her, her friend) to tell me that she didn’t want a relationship and we should just stay friends. I accepted that but then when I got to school the next day we weren’t friends anymore, she wanted nothing to do with me. She was rude and always ignored me. This became an issue because we shared four of our seven classes. Closer to the end of the year I found out from one of my friends that she painted over the writing and gave it to her cousin as a birthday present.

This was the longest, hardest, fall I had ever taken to the friend zone. For all of us friend zone veterans we know that it’s not the other persons fault they don’t like us but other people need to understand that falling in the friend zone can hurt just as much as falling in real life. So for all of you people who have never experienced the friend zone I hope you read this and think before you give someone the idea that you may like them, because the longer you let them believe that the harder they fall. Take a second to think before you give them that push. I would like all of you brave people in the friend zone, or have been in it, to take a moment of silence for those who have fallen in...