4sak3n
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2010
- Messages
- 25
Hi guys.
I have a short story to tell. As stories go it is probably not very exciting, interesting or intriguing. In fact, by most people's standards it is probably quite a pathetic story. However unless I get this story out of my head, I'm going to end up trapped in my own head alongside it. And by that I mean I'm going to obsess and over-analyse and over-think and deconstruct and second guess myself until my brain is reduced to the consistency of a very runny custard. In short, do with it what you will ... judge, criticise, advise, insult, ignore ... whatever takes your fancy. Advice would, naturally, be most welcome but my primary purpose for this post is just to get out of my head for a few minutes while I detail the events of last week.
I am a very private and withdrawn person. I am an introvert, not in the sense that I am quiet and isolated (although I am), but rather in the sense that social interactions larger than a 2-person conversation take a lot of energy and effort rather than being relaxing and enervating as they are for extroverts. Because of this, as well as a veritable legion of self-esteem issues, frequent depressions, anxiety and other such sundry emotional baggage, I have never been in a romantic relationship. This is only one of the side-effects of my own little personal ball of neuroses (numbering amongst the others such delightful gems as social anxiety, paranoia and the complete and utter avoidance of any and all forms of conflict, healthy or otherwise) but suffice it to say that I have always been intimidated by attractive women, frustrated by my inability to even begin to approach them and more than a little depressed by my rather pitiful and, needless to say, unsuccessful previous attempts to rectify this situation. The result: I am a 28 year old shut-in who feels like crawling out of his skin every time he is in the presence of another person who is anything less than a close, personal acquaintance and who desperately yearns for acceptance (aka anything except rejection ... one of the root sources of all my little neuroses) from an intimate female partner.
Cut to last Thursday ... I had found out through the local university grape-vine (I am a student at a small-town university) that someone whom I have harboured a crush on for the last year or so is single. For some reason the removal of this, just one of the many, MANY obstacles standing between me and a successful date with her, was enough to motivate me to think about approaching her. The girl in question, C, was in one of my tutorial groups last year and came to my attention because she was an oasis of refreshing intellect in a desert of blank faces. Our tuts were frequently haunted by the Ghost of Answers Lost as no-one except C and myself ever seemed to answer any of the questions posed, the others choosing instead to fill the tuts with awkward silences and empty answer-sheets. C stood out as soon as she opened her mouth. It was obvious that she was fiercely intelligent but, more than that, she had a distinct and unique way of looking at things which I admired. It didn't help that she was drop-dead gorgeous because the combination of brains and body would have driven me to distraction had I not called on my vast field of experience in not-letting-gorgeous-women-get-to-me. Eyes the colour of that magical sea-green hue which is like tractor beam to the crotch and a SCRAM button for the brain. Long, gorgeous brown hair and even longer legs. Lips that would put a purser to shame and rare, fleeting grin that was easy to miss and hard to forget. Needless to say that I most assuredly, unequivocally, irrevocably, undeniably did NOT allow myself to obsess about her.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago this year when she had short-circuited all of my mental defenses, slipping like the quick and cunning fox beneath the barbed wire of my defensive mechanisms, and grabbed my attention. It was nothing dramatic, dabbling in a new look or fashion which was quite different to her normal style. She had dyed her hair raven black and went for the tights, top and nails in a matching shade of my favourite colour. Women dressed in a black are a major turn-on for me. Even women who are not my type (i.e. I'm not normally attracted to them regardless of how good or bad looking they may be) become irresistible when wearing that magic hue. And after that I could not keep my mind off C whenever I saw her. Nevertheless I was amply surprised to find myself, upon learning of her relationship status, not only planning to ask her out but looking forward to it. Anyone who has ever suffered from even the smallest amount of anxiety over asking someone out knows that soul-destroying game we all play where we plot and plan and scheme to ask someone out only to chicken out at the first opportunity. My joke of a love life is one long string of the most cowardly and pitiful examples of this and (admittedly small) amount of eagerness that lay beneath all of my anxiety was a novel experience for me and I have long since begun to automatically assume while planning to ask someone out that I will, instead, chicken out. For this reason I was surprised to discover that I was looking forward to the asking rather than expecting it to fail right away.
Reasoning that the key to a successful proposition ... and by successful I merely mean one that occurs rather than one which is aborted ... was the removal of obstacles which would intimidate me, I set about giving myself every opportunity to feel confident. It followed, as I thought, that I was looking forward to asking C out because I didn't have to worry about first (subtly) ascertaining whether she was available or not and that if I was feeling confident the anxiety wouldn't get in the way. So, last Thursday with our mutual lecture in the afternoon, I dressed up in my best shirt and slacks in preparation. I shaved after lunch rather than in the morning because I have a goatee and even small amounts of stubble look terrible. I ate a big lunch for energy but ate it well before so that there would be no danger of indigestion or a full stomach draining my energy (sleepy puppy syndrome). I tried to walk slowly to campus so that I wouldn't arrive sweaty and smelly. I pulled out all the stops as well as every trick I could think of (including a few not-so-long-term-healthy ones like chemical (codeine) assistance with calming down) in order to help me overcome my shyness and actually get to ask C out. Again, as anyone who has ever suffered from the smallest amount of anxiety will know, my head was filled with little voices rattling off worse-case scenarios. And one which I am always helpless in similar cases to ignore was the "she's not going to be there after you went through all this effort to muster up the courage" one. Depressingly enough, that was the voice which won the office pool because it turns out that C didn't come into class on Thursday. This is important because it seemed, as illogical as it sounds, to validate my fear that I would have chickened out even though I was looking forward to the event.
Skip ahead again to the next day, Friday, and I was in the library killing time between lectures. I hadn't shaved that morning and had had a rather brisk walk that morning. I had forgotten to grab lunch on the way out of home and, it being the end of the month, couldn't afford to compensate by buying something to eat and my stomach was hollow. I had grabbed the first grubby hoodie my eyes landed on and had managed to get toothpaste on the sleeve that morning. I was most definitely not wrapped up in God's blanket, soothed by the calming warmth of chemicals flowing through my bloodstream, and by that time in the day my hair was a mess. There was ... GASP ... a hole in the crotch of my tracksuit pants. Just a hole in the outer fabric ... all you could see through it was the inner lining rather than my underwear ... but it was enough to make me feel terribly self-conscious. Now keeping all of this in mind, who do think I should spy by the photocopiers but ... C!
I've found in the past that one way to force myself to do something which terrifies me is just not to think about it. This, however is easier said than done, because I have never been able to apply it to asking women out. Diving naked on my 100th scuba dive ... check. Going for my driver's license test ... check. Numerous and uncountable occasions of public (NOT private) speaking ... check. But never have I been able to apply that approach to asking women out ... until Friday. After a significant amount of dithering I squared my shoulders, slapped the grin of the convicted felon on his way to the gallows onto my face, put my toothpastey sleeve, holey pants and probably bad breath out of mind and marched up to her and asked C whether she might want to get a cup of coffee sometime. There was that pause ... the one every guy in existence knows when his fate hangs in the balance and he can see the mental arm-balance swinging back and forth in the her mind.
"Yeeeeeees, we could do that. I'll give you my number and we can see about getting together some time." The response was not disfavourable but not very enthusiastic either. I sensed (or at least thought I sensed. I rarely get a chance to calibrate my understanding of body language, voice patterns and conversational gambits because I am so socially isolated so the possibility is always present that I misinterpret things) that she was putting distance between us, trying to make the non-committal response as vague as possible. she was turned, her profile presented to me, and her attention focused inside her purse. Which is when I noticed what she had been photocopying: a Latin dictionary. I started Latin last year and it quickly became one of my favourite subjects. I took it mainly because of curiosity, justified the choice by telling myself that it would help my English (I am a writer) and found that it was far more helpful than I had ever dreamed. Needless to say I am more than a little passionate about the language and saw the opportunity to allow some of that passion to shine through. Passion for any subject, as I am led to believe, can be quite attractive in a potential partner. I surmised aloud that she must be doing her first year of Latin, mentioned that I was in second year and thinking of doing a third for one of my (3) majors and asked how she was enjoying the course. At this point she stopped digging in her bag, as she had started doing when she gave me the non-committal answer, turned to face me and asked "Would you like to go and get that coffee now perhaps?"
..
8( 
..
%)
Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
Coffee lasted 30 mins ... and the conversation associated with it a further 2.5 hours. It turns out that we are both extremely similar in nature. We are both quite private people. She doesn't like going out with her friends any more than I do. She, however, does force herself to do so even only for a few hours just to be social and trumps me in this. She values her privacy and refused to move in to digs with her friends. We swapped tales of our respective tattoos and regaled each other of our plans for future ones. We talked of books and of student life and of hobbies and of family and of pets and of friends and of school and of subjects and all those little inconsequentials which are so very, very important because they give you an excuse to talk to that one wonderful person for just 5 minutes longer, 10 minutes longer or however long you can drag things out for. Through most of this we made regular eye contact. We tended to be facing each other with open body posture, no folder arms or crossed legs or profiles presented. Conversation flowed easily back and forth and my usually clumsy and blatant segues were instead effortless and subtle. Talk about one of her friends working on a film set led to talk of when I worked with the same producer which led to talk of how I had to cut that work short to ... and this was the truly important part of the story ... work as a scuba diving instructor. Talk of our respective subjects led to why I am taking them that led to ... and this was the truly important part of the explanation ... my passion for writing. A question about managing hair (I've grown mine long and the preconception that guys don't take care of their hair can be useful at times) led to ... and this was the truly important part of the gambit ... a simple but well received compliment of her gorgeous, flowing waterfall of keratin. However all of these things were unplanned and unpremeditated, coming up naturally through relaxed and casual conversation (as opposed to forcing your conversational partner's points fit the script in your head). This is the first time that I can remember in years that I spoke to a woman without second-guessing every second word out of my mouth, without fear of showing any hint of warmth or affection for fear of instant rejection and without artifice or plan and I am relatively certain that it seemed as relaxed and casual (and hence enjoyable) to her as it did to me.
We put an end to our session after 3 hours. It wasn't, officially at least, any sort of date. There were the inevitable awkward pauses and sometimes I did give off the wrong body language signals. For instance I am almost constantly in a state of hyper vigilance when out in public. I am constantly checking and scanning and visually seeking out threats. By this I mean people who might invade my considerably large personal space. Because of this, during our chat I was constantly looking away to check my peripheral vision, focusing on people as they walked past to get a hint from their body language which direction they are heading, checking behind me and consequently I often end up breaking eye contact. During one such instance a group of women was wandering in to our coffee nook and my eyes lingered in order to categorise, analyse and evaluate the threat they posed. However C's eyes followed mine and I was caught "staring" at a group of attractive females who were going to pass far by us and hence posed no threat to my personal space.
Sometimes my anxiety did catch up with me as I realised just who I was sitting across from and what we were doing. As innocent and uncomplicated as a simple cup of coffee with a friendly classmate may sound to you, this was one of the biggest and scariest things I had ever done in my love life. Pathetic, I know. The point, though, is that it was for all intents and purposes and a casual, relaxed conversation where we revealed that we share many, many interests and have a sympathetic understanding of many of the problems in each others' lives ... aka the perfect platform from which to embark on a potential, new relationship.
Before we parted company, C either dredged up an excuse to see me again or simply and pragmatically asked me to collaborate in preparation for our exams by sharing notes. Both are reasonable explanations for her actions and the truth of this unknowable until we spend more time together and her intentions are revealed. And this is what brings me to my reason for posting this ... because now I am left waiting for 2 weeks while she faces and overcomes a monstrously unfair exam schedule during which neither of us will have much time for socialising. And during these two weeks I am going to dissect every last sentence we shared and analyse and deconstruct and second-guess and obsess and worry and daydream and plan and predict and dare to hope. And this is the most sure-fire way I know of ruining a decent opportunity.
Did she spend 3 hours with me because she was caught up in enjoyable company or was she too shy and scared to end the conversation when she wanted (a problem I am quite familiar with)? Did she move out into the sun so that she could warm up or did she want me to have to squint into it when looking at her? Did she spy the hole in my pants and think that my underwear (rather than the liner) was white? Did she think I was a pompous blowhard bragging about the awesome Southern Right whale he saw from 5 metres away underwater or was the segue un-noticeable? DOES SHE WANT TO SEE ME AGAIN OR IS THE EXACT SAME THING THAT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME I GET EVEN THE SMALLEST GLIMPSE OF HOPE GOING TO HAPPEN AND I'M GOING TO BE REJECTED AFTER THINKING MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, JUST MAYBE FOR ONCE IN THIS WORLD OF PISS AND SHIT I MIGHT, JUST MAYBE, HAVE A SHOT?
...
*deeeeeep breath*
You can see why obsession is probably not a good idea. This is why I needed to get out of my head. All the signs are good. I sent her a message giving her my cell number, included an off-the-cuff haiku in it to wish her luck with her oppressive exam schedule and she called it sweet. She made a point of thanking me for sending the message because she forgot to get my number. She indirectly accepted or validated the potential new nick-name I hinted at in the haiku ( ... god, my mind is twisted. It's always full of plots and plans and schemes and tricks and ways of impressing people) for her. At the end of this weekend, as I sit here writing this account, I can't think of one overtly negative sign that C is not, in fact, into me and was just humouring me in case I was a psychopath, and yet I still find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. From the moment I spotted that Latin dictionary and she turned towards me, opening up her body language and turning the "maybe" into "yes!", everything just seemed to fall into place. And things never, EVER go this well for me.
I plan to keep in contact, a sentence or two every week or so just to remind her subconsciously that I am around, and then when the exams are over ask her out on an actual date (as opposed to the casual, intimate, friendly,get-to-know-you, is-she-or-isn't-she-into-me, proto-date that Friday was) in a neutral, public, safe location. But now I'm left, waiting out the next two weeks obsessing and dreading the inevitable disappointment and screaming in frustration because one of the best ways to achieve failure is to expect it.
And there you have it, there is my story, and now after having told it maybe I can have a few hours of peace before my worry-wort mind starts predicting how next I am going to have that dried up and shriveled husk of a heart of mine that you need jumper-cables just to get started ground into the sand again.
Thanks for listening guys, sorry for the wall o'text and yes, I know that I am a neurotic mess.
I have a short story to tell. As stories go it is probably not very exciting, interesting or intriguing. In fact, by most people's standards it is probably quite a pathetic story. However unless I get this story out of my head, I'm going to end up trapped in my own head alongside it. And by that I mean I'm going to obsess and over-analyse and over-think and deconstruct and second guess myself until my brain is reduced to the consistency of a very runny custard. In short, do with it what you will ... judge, criticise, advise, insult, ignore ... whatever takes your fancy. Advice would, naturally, be most welcome but my primary purpose for this post is just to get out of my head for a few minutes while I detail the events of last week.
I am a very private and withdrawn person. I am an introvert, not in the sense that I am quiet and isolated (although I am), but rather in the sense that social interactions larger than a 2-person conversation take a lot of energy and effort rather than being relaxing and enervating as they are for extroverts. Because of this, as well as a veritable legion of self-esteem issues, frequent depressions, anxiety and other such sundry emotional baggage, I have never been in a romantic relationship. This is only one of the side-effects of my own little personal ball of neuroses (numbering amongst the others such delightful gems as social anxiety, paranoia and the complete and utter avoidance of any and all forms of conflict, healthy or otherwise) but suffice it to say that I have always been intimidated by attractive women, frustrated by my inability to even begin to approach them and more than a little depressed by my rather pitiful and, needless to say, unsuccessful previous attempts to rectify this situation. The result: I am a 28 year old shut-in who feels like crawling out of his skin every time he is in the presence of another person who is anything less than a close, personal acquaintance and who desperately yearns for acceptance (aka anything except rejection ... one of the root sources of all my little neuroses) from an intimate female partner.
Cut to last Thursday ... I had found out through the local university grape-vine (I am a student at a small-town university) that someone whom I have harboured a crush on for the last year or so is single. For some reason the removal of this, just one of the many, MANY obstacles standing between me and a successful date with her, was enough to motivate me to think about approaching her. The girl in question, C, was in one of my tutorial groups last year and came to my attention because she was an oasis of refreshing intellect in a desert of blank faces. Our tuts were frequently haunted by the Ghost of Answers Lost as no-one except C and myself ever seemed to answer any of the questions posed, the others choosing instead to fill the tuts with awkward silences and empty answer-sheets. C stood out as soon as she opened her mouth. It was obvious that she was fiercely intelligent but, more than that, she had a distinct and unique way of looking at things which I admired. It didn't help that she was drop-dead gorgeous because the combination of brains and body would have driven me to distraction had I not called on my vast field of experience in not-letting-gorgeous-women-get-to-me. Eyes the colour of that magical sea-green hue which is like tractor beam to the crotch and a SCRAM button for the brain. Long, gorgeous brown hair and even longer legs. Lips that would put a purser to shame and rare, fleeting grin that was easy to miss and hard to forget. Needless to say that I most assuredly, unequivocally, irrevocably, undeniably did NOT allow myself to obsess about her.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago this year when she had short-circuited all of my mental defenses, slipping like the quick and cunning fox beneath the barbed wire of my defensive mechanisms, and grabbed my attention. It was nothing dramatic, dabbling in a new look or fashion which was quite different to her normal style. She had dyed her hair raven black and went for the tights, top and nails in a matching shade of my favourite colour. Women dressed in a black are a major turn-on for me. Even women who are not my type (i.e. I'm not normally attracted to them regardless of how good or bad looking they may be) become irresistible when wearing that magic hue. And after that I could not keep my mind off C whenever I saw her. Nevertheless I was amply surprised to find myself, upon learning of her relationship status, not only planning to ask her out but looking forward to it. Anyone who has ever suffered from even the smallest amount of anxiety over asking someone out knows that soul-destroying game we all play where we plot and plan and scheme to ask someone out only to chicken out at the first opportunity. My joke of a love life is one long string of the most cowardly and pitiful examples of this and (admittedly small) amount of eagerness that lay beneath all of my anxiety was a novel experience for me and I have long since begun to automatically assume while planning to ask someone out that I will, instead, chicken out. For this reason I was surprised to discover that I was looking forward to the asking rather than expecting it to fail right away.
Reasoning that the key to a successful proposition ... and by successful I merely mean one that occurs rather than one which is aborted ... was the removal of obstacles which would intimidate me, I set about giving myself every opportunity to feel confident. It followed, as I thought, that I was looking forward to asking C out because I didn't have to worry about first (subtly) ascertaining whether she was available or not and that if I was feeling confident the anxiety wouldn't get in the way. So, last Thursday with our mutual lecture in the afternoon, I dressed up in my best shirt and slacks in preparation. I shaved after lunch rather than in the morning because I have a goatee and even small amounts of stubble look terrible. I ate a big lunch for energy but ate it well before so that there would be no danger of indigestion or a full stomach draining my energy (sleepy puppy syndrome). I tried to walk slowly to campus so that I wouldn't arrive sweaty and smelly. I pulled out all the stops as well as every trick I could think of (including a few not-so-long-term-healthy ones like chemical (codeine) assistance with calming down) in order to help me overcome my shyness and actually get to ask C out. Again, as anyone who has ever suffered from the smallest amount of anxiety will know, my head was filled with little voices rattling off worse-case scenarios. And one which I am always helpless in similar cases to ignore was the "she's not going to be there after you went through all this effort to muster up the courage" one. Depressingly enough, that was the voice which won the office pool because it turns out that C didn't come into class on Thursday. This is important because it seemed, as illogical as it sounds, to validate my fear that I would have chickened out even though I was looking forward to the event.
Skip ahead again to the next day, Friday, and I was in the library killing time between lectures. I hadn't shaved that morning and had had a rather brisk walk that morning. I had forgotten to grab lunch on the way out of home and, it being the end of the month, couldn't afford to compensate by buying something to eat and my stomach was hollow. I had grabbed the first grubby hoodie my eyes landed on and had managed to get toothpaste on the sleeve that morning. I was most definitely not wrapped up in God's blanket, soothed by the calming warmth of chemicals flowing through my bloodstream, and by that time in the day my hair was a mess. There was ... GASP ... a hole in the crotch of my tracksuit pants. Just a hole in the outer fabric ... all you could see through it was the inner lining rather than my underwear ... but it was enough to make me feel terribly self-conscious. Now keeping all of this in mind, who do think I should spy by the photocopiers but ... C!
I've found in the past that one way to force myself to do something which terrifies me is just not to think about it. This, however is easier said than done, because I have never been able to apply it to asking women out. Diving naked on my 100th scuba dive ... check. Going for my driver's license test ... check. Numerous and uncountable occasions of public (NOT private) speaking ... check. But never have I been able to apply that approach to asking women out ... until Friday. After a significant amount of dithering I squared my shoulders, slapped the grin of the convicted felon on his way to the gallows onto my face, put my toothpastey sleeve, holey pants and probably bad breath out of mind and marched up to her and asked C whether she might want to get a cup of coffee sometime. There was that pause ... the one every guy in existence knows when his fate hangs in the balance and he can see the mental arm-balance swinging back and forth in the her mind.
"Yeeeeeees, we could do that. I'll give you my number and we can see about getting together some time." The response was not disfavourable but not very enthusiastic either. I sensed (or at least thought I sensed. I rarely get a chance to calibrate my understanding of body language, voice patterns and conversational gambits because I am so socially isolated so the possibility is always present that I misinterpret things) that she was putting distance between us, trying to make the non-committal response as vague as possible. she was turned, her profile presented to me, and her attention focused inside her purse. Which is when I noticed what she had been photocopying: a Latin dictionary. I started Latin last year and it quickly became one of my favourite subjects. I took it mainly because of curiosity, justified the choice by telling myself that it would help my English (I am a writer) and found that it was far more helpful than I had ever dreamed. Needless to say I am more than a little passionate about the language and saw the opportunity to allow some of that passion to shine through. Passion for any subject, as I am led to believe, can be quite attractive in a potential partner. I surmised aloud that she must be doing her first year of Latin, mentioned that I was in second year and thinking of doing a third for one of my (3) majors and asked how she was enjoying the course. At this point she stopped digging in her bag, as she had started doing when she gave me the non-committal answer, turned to face me and asked "Would you like to go and get that coffee now perhaps?"
..
8( ..
%)
Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
Coffee lasted 30 mins ... and the conversation associated with it a further 2.5 hours. It turns out that we are both extremely similar in nature. We are both quite private people. She doesn't like going out with her friends any more than I do. She, however, does force herself to do so even only for a few hours just to be social and trumps me in this. She values her privacy and refused to move in to digs with her friends. We swapped tales of our respective tattoos and regaled each other of our plans for future ones. We talked of books and of student life and of hobbies and of family and of pets and of friends and of school and of subjects and all those little inconsequentials which are so very, very important because they give you an excuse to talk to that one wonderful person for just 5 minutes longer, 10 minutes longer or however long you can drag things out for. Through most of this we made regular eye contact. We tended to be facing each other with open body posture, no folder arms or crossed legs or profiles presented. Conversation flowed easily back and forth and my usually clumsy and blatant segues were instead effortless and subtle. Talk about one of her friends working on a film set led to talk of when I worked with the same producer which led to talk of how I had to cut that work short to ... and this was the truly important part of the story ... work as a scuba diving instructor. Talk of our respective subjects led to why I am taking them that led to ... and this was the truly important part of the explanation ... my passion for writing. A question about managing hair (I've grown mine long and the preconception that guys don't take care of their hair can be useful at times) led to ... and this was the truly important part of the gambit ... a simple but well received compliment of her gorgeous, flowing waterfall of keratin. However all of these things were unplanned and unpremeditated, coming up naturally through relaxed and casual conversation (as opposed to forcing your conversational partner's points fit the script in your head). This is the first time that I can remember in years that I spoke to a woman without second-guessing every second word out of my mouth, without fear of showing any hint of warmth or affection for fear of instant rejection and without artifice or plan and I am relatively certain that it seemed as relaxed and casual (and hence enjoyable) to her as it did to me.
We put an end to our session after 3 hours. It wasn't, officially at least, any sort of date. There were the inevitable awkward pauses and sometimes I did give off the wrong body language signals. For instance I am almost constantly in a state of hyper vigilance when out in public. I am constantly checking and scanning and visually seeking out threats. By this I mean people who might invade my considerably large personal space. Because of this, during our chat I was constantly looking away to check my peripheral vision, focusing on people as they walked past to get a hint from their body language which direction they are heading, checking behind me and consequently I often end up breaking eye contact. During one such instance a group of women was wandering in to our coffee nook and my eyes lingered in order to categorise, analyse and evaluate the threat they posed. However C's eyes followed mine and I was caught "staring" at a group of attractive females who were going to pass far by us and hence posed no threat to my personal space.
Sometimes my anxiety did catch up with me as I realised just who I was sitting across from and what we were doing. As innocent and uncomplicated as a simple cup of coffee with a friendly classmate may sound to you, this was one of the biggest and scariest things I had ever done in my love life. Pathetic, I know. The point, though, is that it was for all intents and purposes and a casual, relaxed conversation where we revealed that we share many, many interests and have a sympathetic understanding of many of the problems in each others' lives ... aka the perfect platform from which to embark on a potential, new relationship.Before we parted company, C either dredged up an excuse to see me again or simply and pragmatically asked me to collaborate in preparation for our exams by sharing notes. Both are reasonable explanations for her actions and the truth of this unknowable until we spend more time together and her intentions are revealed. And this is what brings me to my reason for posting this ... because now I am left waiting for 2 weeks while she faces and overcomes a monstrously unfair exam schedule during which neither of us will have much time for socialising. And during these two weeks I am going to dissect every last sentence we shared and analyse and deconstruct and second-guess and obsess and worry and daydream and plan and predict and dare to hope. And this is the most sure-fire way I know of ruining a decent opportunity.
Did she spend 3 hours with me because she was caught up in enjoyable company or was she too shy and scared to end the conversation when she wanted (a problem I am quite familiar with)? Did she move out into the sun so that she could warm up or did she want me to have to squint into it when looking at her? Did she spy the hole in my pants and think that my underwear (rather than the liner) was white?
Did she think I was a pompous blowhard bragging about the awesome Southern Right whale he saw from 5 metres away underwater or was the segue un-noticeable? DOES SHE WANT TO SEE ME AGAIN OR IS THE EXACT SAME THING THAT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME I GET EVEN THE SMALLEST GLIMPSE OF HOPE GOING TO HAPPEN AND I'M GOING TO BE REJECTED AFTER THINKING MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, JUST MAYBE FOR ONCE IN THIS WORLD OF PISS AND SHIT I MIGHT, JUST MAYBE, HAVE A SHOT?...
*deeeeeep breath*
You can see why obsession is probably not a good idea.
This is why I needed to get out of my head. All the signs are good. I sent her a message giving her my cell number, included an off-the-cuff haiku in it to wish her luck with her oppressive exam schedule and she called it sweet. She made a point of thanking me for sending the message because she forgot to get my number. She indirectly accepted or validated the potential new nick-name I hinted at in the haiku ( ... god, my mind is twisted. It's always full of plots and plans and schemes and tricks and ways of impressing people) for her. At the end of this weekend, as I sit here writing this account, I can't think of one overtly negative sign that C is not, in fact, into me and was just humouring me in case I was a psychopath, and yet I still find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. From the moment I spotted that Latin dictionary and she turned towards me, opening up her body language and turning the "maybe" into "yes!", everything just seemed to fall into place. And things never, EVER go this well for me.I plan to keep in contact, a sentence or two every week or so just to remind her subconsciously that I am around, and then when the exams are over ask her out on an actual date (as opposed to the casual, intimate, friendly,get-to-know-you, is-she-or-isn't-she-into-me, proto-date that Friday was) in a neutral, public, safe location. But now I'm left, waiting out the next two weeks obsessing and dreading the inevitable disappointment and screaming in frustration because one of the best ways to achieve failure is to expect it.
And there you have it, there is my story, and now after having told it maybe I can have a few hours of peace before my worry-wort mind starts predicting how next I am going to have that dried up and shriveled husk of a heart of mine that you need jumper-cables just to get started ground into the sand again.
Thanks for listening guys, sorry for the wall o'text and yes, I know that I am a neurotic mess.
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