My first crush was a girl from another country I met on a short exchange. Nothing happened but the feelings were mutual. It was easy to romanticize and make her into something she wasn’t. It took me years to get over the regret even after seeing the same scenario work out horribly for the other half of my exchange where he did the program for a year chasing after a girl to be dumped within a week of arriving. Eventually I turned regret into a lesson against inaction, but it took a long time before I finished mourning the imaginary path my life could have taken.