Thursday, August 22, 2013

Help Me, Internet!

The problem:

So, there's this girl that I like.  I have (really) liked this girl for a long time.  We've been pretty good friends for awhile, and I never wanted to ruin that friendship by admitting that I had feelings for this girl (well, I guess that technically she's a woman, but I digress), so I kept it to myself.

So during one of my spells of boneheaded insensitivity I criticized something this girl said, and we got into an argument, and then I did something unbelievably stupid:

I told her how I felt about her.

This is not something that I normally do with women.  I am an emotional coward, and my tendency is to usually just wait until they find someone else that has better looks, more money, or a nicer personality and then to write it off as "c'est la vie." If I stay away I can usually stay friends for a very long time, which to me is better than nothing, which is what I usually have after I ask a woman out.

Now, she's a nice person, to be sure.  She talked to me after I told her this (two days ago).  She told me (before) my confession that my most unattractive trait was my negativity.


Hard pills:

Now it's true that I have a predisposition towards the negative.  I'm no optimist, quite frankly.  But over the last few years I've actually started to come out of that funk, but unfortunately she only knows me by reputation beforehand.  I am still very self-deprecating, and I have a weird need for positive reinforcement that comes from growing up with excessive negative reinforcement.  I understand this, and it's one of the things I've been trying to change.  This has been helped by (of all things) supplementing my diet to keep me from the deep lows that I have fallen into in the past.  I haven't had any for awhile, but old habits are hard to break. On her end she's been going through a tough spell of late, and I also fear that my advances have come off as predatory.  This wasn't my intention, but I wanted to comfort her in her time of need. 


How I handled it:

I made her a music video.  It's really just me singing badly but it does have several layered special effects and I'm not ashamed to say that it took me a while to make (and several crashes of the software messed up some effects) but it was nothing if not funny.  No, I'm not going to show it to you.  It's private.

I've been trying really hard not to text her, but since that day she's barely said two words to me.  My fears are confirmed today:  she is avoiding me.  I opened Pandora's box, but after the monsters flew out there doesn't seem to be much hope left. I'm out of ideas.


Help me, internet!

I'm probably just going to give it time, even if she ends up stomping on my heart I can't change the way I feel about her. I'm still looking for advice, no matter how crazy or boneheaded you want to be, I want you to share your stories, I want you to tell people that you're hurt and you're not even sure why, or that you overcame the odds.  I want to hear your comments, so that I can find camaraderie and maybe even a little hope!

Oh, okay. Here it is. Yes, I am a dork!