I’ve been talking to a girl most of the summer and eventually it became apparent to me that I was kinda falling for her. Despite all the warning signals I’ve seen, the feelings have persisted for quite a while. In recent weeks I’ve become increasingly conflicted because of what I’ve perceived to be mixed messages coming from her, combined with my own insecurity about the whole thing. I’m not sure if she’s clueless, afraid, or purposefully obtuse, but, regardless, my feelings have been having a fairly negative impact on my emotional well-being.

I haven’t ever really reached out to a girl for a relationship in the past, they have come to me. I find the whole process awkward and attempt to avoid it at all costs. This one was gnawing at me, though, so tonight, after a conversation about not being able to read people or understand what they’re thinking, I told her how I felt.

I wrote out a message in the IM window, then erased it. Wrote it again, slightly different, and the whole time I was typing I was terrified I might accidently hit the enter button. I cleared it again, and then opened up a word processor and typed it out a third time, and stared at it for a few minutes. Finally I copied and pasted it into the IM window, and stared some more. Tried to press enter a few times, but couldn’t. Finally, I just pressed it. And then I went and did laundry while listening to some Dashboard Confessional music.

I felt a tremendous burden had been lifted from my shoulders after I sent the message. This had been eating me up inside, and finally it was out there in the open. As I did my laundry I became increasingly convinced that she did not share my feelings, and would give me a pretty curt rejection. I didn’t feel that bad about it, actually. Acceptance or rejection, the important thing is that what I wanted to say had been said, and the ball was in her court. If she doesn’t want to go forward with anything, or doesn’t find me at all her type, that’s fine. I respect that and understand it and we can have a nice friendship and I can stop obsessing. And if she does want to try something, that’s great.

I felt really, really good. And I came back. And her response was that her IM client was misbehaving and she couldn’t talk right now and had to go do things.

Well, okay then. Whatever. My night was still pretty good.