"I won't be sad but in case I'll go there every day, to make myself feel bad"
The other week I had a brief stint of bravery. I remember it so clearly and it pittered away almost as quickly as it came. I had built myself up and convinced myself that this was indeed the day that I was going to swallow my nerves and ask Aussie boy out. No more sitting around and pussy footing around the issue, I thought to myself. Sometimes you can't just sit by and wait for things to happen. Sometimes you have to kick the damn ball in order to get it rolling.
I didn't ask him out because he left work early to go on a three day holiday. By the time the weekend was over and we were all back in the office, my courage had slinked away back into the dark crevases in my spineless body. Again I went back to sitting and staring at him thinking why doesn't he buy shirts one size smaller? They would look a lot better on him if they fit him properly. Or why didn't he get a hair cut? He wouldn't have to always have to brush it out of his eyes if he'd just get it trimmed a little.
Yes, I'm a stalker freak. I've accepted this fact about myself and do my best to seem as "normal" as possible whenever I'm in public. Needless to say, it's constantly proving to be a challenge for me. On days when I find it hard to hide my stalker freak tendancies, I blame it on the fact that 'I'm a writer, and I need to observe people in their daily routines in order to better describe my characters in the stories that I write.' Ha! Whatever.
The other night, Helen and I found ourselves sitting opposite each other on our settees, and had a very deep and honest conversation about the boys in our past, the boys in our present and the Unknown boys of our futures. We talked for a fair few hours about why we put ourselves through so much stress over the most simple things? Text messages leave us hindering by our phones all day, and when we do get a message, we hate ourselves a little bit every time we jump with excitement. Then we hate ourselves even more when the message isn't from the person we were hoping to hear from, but rather just a friend to send us a funny story about some random stranger on the bus. Facebook is the deadliest place on the internet and if we're not careful we can easily spend an entire day combing through their profiles; we look at every picture, scrutinize it until we're satisfied with the imaginary story that we've invented, and then move on to their wall posts. It's not until the other person comes home and we realize that we haven't even gone to bathroom all day.
Why do we torture ourselves? We're almost 100% positive that the boys we're interested in don't do this. They go and do other boy things like play the Wii, watch football and cut trees down in their back gardens. They don't care enough to pilfer through our internet profiles or wait breathlessly by the phone.
And then I wondered out loud to Helen about how it's stupid we have all of these dumb games between men and women. What's with waiting a certain amount of time to text a boy back? Or call someone? Or sending messages? Why can't it just be simple? Why can't a person just honestly go up to another person and say, 'Hey. I think you're cute and was wondering, if you're interested, if you would like to go out with me sometime?' Why do we need all of the boundaries and those shitty 'rules' of dating engagement? Why does it have to be so hard?
I know why I don't really put myself out there. And by 'really' I mean 'emotionally'. It's just as basic and simple as all of the above questions: fear of rejection. It's a big one. Nobody wants to know that the person that they've taken an interest in, doesn't share the same feelings. Nobody wants to get shot down, left in the middle of a room humilated and stripped naked exposing their raw emotional feelings. Who cares if they're a stranger that you may never see again? They're a stranger who hasn't earned the right to see me in a vulnerable state. And telling a boy that I like him? Is a very vulnerable place to put myself in.
And also, hidden deep within this I Am An Independent Woman veneer, lies a hopeless romantic. I don't care if it is the 21st century, I want a boy to ask me out. I want him to charm me. I want there to be something. I'm an easy girl to please. It doesn't take much to make me smile. Even a little bit of conversation and banter would do it. Why do I have to be the one to ask them out? Isn't one of the priviledges of being a lady is that we don't have to get the ball rolling?
And also (again), I automatically assume that if he doesn't ask me out, or even speak to me, that means he thinks I'm ugly, isn't interested and would much rather fuck a chicken.
Remember, I'm a freak.
I told Helen that it feels like it'll always go back to Ash for me. He's there still, all the time lingering in the back of my mind, reminding me of our past relationship. I still compare boys to him. I know, I shouldn't do it, but I do. I read old emails. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself on his old blog that he doesn't write on anymore and read some posts that he wrote about me that weren't easy to read. And there it was, all of those raw emotions again boiled to the surface and left me remembering about a time when I wasn't pleasant to be with.
"It scares me," I told Helen. "I'm scared that I'll never be in a healthy, happy relationship ever again. What if I fuck the next one up too? You know, if I ever get another one. It makes me want to crawl under a rock knowing how much Ash hates me."
"Well, if I'm honest, I know that I don't really hate D. He is a good person, and we were good together. But I had to hate him just to deal with things, because if I didn't, I'd sit and go mental. I would think about his next girlfriend and know that she was getting all of the good qualities that I had first. Maybe that's what Ash had to do with you. There's a fine line between love and hate."
"Yeah. Something that makes me not hate D just a little bit is knowing that if he feels anywhere near as bad about what he did to you, like how I feel about what I did with Ash, then he's living with quite a burden. Because I feel it every day. It never really goes away. It just sits there and I haven't been able to let myself let it go."
Which rounds me all the way back to Aussie boy. Yes, we haven't ever really spoken properly, and yes, he might think that I'm ugly, or even have a girlfriend, and the chances of me getting shot down and humiliated are high. My face will flare up, I will stutter, I will ramble, I may even trip and fall flat on my face as I'm walking up to him. But nonetheless, it never hurts to try. I have to get over this fear that keeps me (literally and figuratively) sitting in the same place. Otherwise I may never get to experience the other half of goodness that might happen if he agrees and says yes.