Happy Valentines Day ladies and gents! A day of love, appreciation, and chocolate.
While a lot of people have significant others, and some people just chill, so many of us have something even worse: crushes. This is a story of one of mine and why you should act on yours this Valentine’s Day. Source
My senior year I had a crush on a boy. Like, a crush crush. Like an I would write his name in cursive crush. We talked for a number of months and it had seemed like the feeling was pretty mutual. We would talk all the time and laugh and he would tease me in a super douchey way that makes me gag now, but at the time I thought it was ~adorable~ and ~quirky~.
I would think about him pretty much daily and talking to him made me get that floaty feeling. That December, I decided that enough is enough. I can’t think about him anymore if I don’t know that he likes me back. So, after consulting the war council (aka freaking out in a First Watch), I decided that I will casually and nonchalantly invite him to get coffee with me. The next time I saw him, we were working on a project together and the conversation naturally came to rest. This was it.
I took a deep breath, and said, “On my way home, I’m stopping at Scooter’s. Want to come?”
It was a monumental victory that I didn’t throw up, honestly.
Unfortunately, he didn’t realize I was asking him out and was also unable to go on account for homework, but assured me that we would have to another time.
Over the next few months, we kept talking, but nothing really came up again until February. Valentine’s day. The big whopper. It was now or never.
For those of you who know me, you know that I am very direct, and often quite tactless. But we were at an impasse. I’m not the type of person to dedicate time to someone when they’re not interested in putting the time in.
The Friday before Valentine’s Day, we were having a casual conversation over a project we were working on. I had non-dramatically and realistically stated how if the project didn’t work out, I was going to scream. To which, my crush invited me to.
“Scream.”
“Scream?”
“You said you wanted to. There’s no one else here. Scream.”
“I can’t scream.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I save the really good screams for when I’m in my car.”
“You scream in your car?”
“You don’t?”
I didn’t scream. However, this conversation gave me the perfect idea. I liked him, I thought he liked me, and I was done wasting time. I also didn’t want to ask him out in a way that was unclear of my intentions. It was either all or nothing. And I’m never the person to do nothing.
Later that day I texted him.
“One of the reasons I scream in my car is because you haven’t asked me out yet.”
There it was. All out in the open.
He texted me back, saying how he was flattered, how it must’ve taken a lot of courage to put myself out there – ladies, this is a fantastic rejection line, one which I have utilized myself and it worked gr8 – and lastly, how he wasn’t looking for a relationship at the moment, but he valued our friendship.
While it didn’t work out, no, it wasn’t mortifying, I didn’t want to hashtag die, and we remained good friends. Asking him out and getting closure actually helped me get over him. Not to mention, it was really…empowering and exhilarating. Something about embracing your emotions and sharing them with someone else.
So many of my friends told me, “You’re so brave” or “I could never do that”. Both statements that I don’t quite understand. What’s the worst that could happen? He says no? I guess the worst happened to me and it still wasn’t even bad. He said no and then I got to focus on other things. And what if the best would’ve happened? I’m still not seeing where someone could lose.
Sure, the chase is fun. But that’s way too mundane of a game to play all the time and life is too short to not put yourself out there. Go get ‘em, Valentine.