Third Grade Rejection - a poem

I was in third grade when I confessed my love for a fellow classmate.
This was a mistake that I would apologize for when my classmate,
whose named started with H decided this news was fit for divulging
a number of tears. She streamed them down her cheeks, and gave
to teacher the news of her distress. That I a young boy in the third grade
had admitted to having a crush on her. I apologized profusely to this
news. I had to apologize for having any feelings at all, and I suppose
that continues on to this day, though not as bad as ever. Back then though
standing in our line-up to go indoors, talking to my close knit friends,
one of them a cousin about my secret admiration for a girl my age,
in our grade, and in our class, overheard by another girl nearby,
who shouted it at the top of her lungs for all to hear. Maybe it was
that everyone heard that I, Aaron, was having childish romantic feelings
for someone, that resulted in Miss H having to pout and scream that I would
ever dare to feel them towards her. That it had become public knowledge.
But, maybe it was the start of the feeling of my own inadequacy's,
that I wasn't much of anything to feel anything for, and it would be awfully
terrible to date me. Not that dating was something that a third grader
really knew anything about, except as fake imitations of what they thought
dating was. For, certain peers of mine had paired off, became couples,
in the simplest form of the word, barely even holding hands, and never
even kissing, at least I assumed so. Just a status symbol being practiced
on the way to being an adult. However, me potentially wanting to be paired
with H was the horror story of someone else's narrative, and I perhaps
internalized the narrative that I was not much of a catch. Feelings of guilt
permeating through me, and apologizing that I felt anything at all. Giving
a false explanation that I only liked her as a friend, which was a flat out lie
from my young heart. This is not an answer to a riddle of who I am, only
an observation that I apologize a  lot for having feelings, and being me,
that I can't remember a time when I didn't. This is something to be worked on,
and to continue to pick at, and rewrite the story that I have internalized
of my own roles of inadequacy. And to forgive my third grade self for apologizing
for having feelings, just because someone else reacted unfavorably.