“I like you.”
Y’know, for all my directness, I’m just awful when it comes to professing attraction or turning down someone. Call it a lack of experience, but I wind up saying things that my heart (and mind) tells me not to. I also wind up behaving in the oddest patterns whenever shit blows itself out of the water.
I wound up saying a soft ‘no’ to Chris today. I would’ve said ‘NO, I’M NOT INTERESTED’, but apparently the coward in me just can’t. I made a bunch of excuses up - I have no time after the finals, I’m flying to Washington right after that and then going back to Singapore for 3 weeks, but hey, if you want to get together after that, I’d be happy to - and then hopefully by then he’d have forgotten about it, and I won’t have to talk to him again.
Keyword: hopefully. Chances are he’s going to email me again, and I’ll have to wind up turning him down outright. That’s my pattern, I feel. Despite the fact that I always want things to get done RIGHT NOW, I always procrastinate whenever I have to do something that I don’t want to (in this case, turning him down and hurting his feelings).
I don’t know why I don’t want to step out of my comfort zone and just go have a friendly lunch with him. Everytime when someone professes an interest in me, I wind up analyzing every negative aspect of the person’s character, and therefore attempting to justify why I don’t like him. This winds up becoming so much of what I define him to be it turns into a grudge. Case in point: Azrul. Maaaybe Jonathan… but he was such a long time ago.
This is one of my faults. I cannot go back to being ‘friends’ when someone says he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with me and I don’t feel the same way. That is what I’m afraid of… and I suppose that is why I don’t want to jeopardize even the most superficial friendship. The emotional baggage of the aftermath is a waste of my mental resources. This ‘going out’ with him may wind up turning into something that I don’t want it to be, and I’m just afraid of that risk.
This works both ways. I’m afraid of telling someone that I like him, because I can’t go back after that. I’ll avoid him, I’ll die of embarrassment, and it’ll turn into yet another long-term grudge based on the most mundane reasons possible.
The potential that ‘I like you’ may turn into something more than friendship frightens me… Haha, which may be partially the reason I have no guy friends (the other theory is gender stereotypes, but I don’t want to get into that. I’ll get my feminist rage on). I suppose I’ve unconsciously embraced the “love at first sight” cliche, and I’m utterly convinced a reciprocation of feelings will not happen for me - because I seem to be attracted to men that are attracted to the complete opposite of my personality - and my instincts would not allow me to marry or procreate.
So, yes. I will stay single forever, and happily so… at least until the day of my death, when I realize I’m completely alone and no one will put flowers on my grave.
