So there's this girl (lengthy).
Okay, so, first, a bit of background: I'm the classic shy introverted loser in pretty much every respect that matters. I'm also a college freshman living the dorm lifestyle. Last semester, my first semester here, I was vaguely depressed most of the time and so late at night or in the early hours of the morning I would wander the halls listening to music and thinking typical stupid depressing thoughts. I kept to myself; didn't really talk to anyone.
One night when I'm walking around I run into this hot girl who suddenly asks me, point-blank, whether or not I'm depressed, pining for my childhood and simpler days before college, because she's totally seen me walking around all the time. She kind of freaks me out, because that was EXACTLY what I was doing, right down to the pining; I was left with the kind of bizarre impression that she can see right through me. So I tell her no, I'm fine, and we exchange pleasantries and she leaves and I leave.
We met again some few weeks later; I stammered my way through a conversation and apologized for my weird sentence structure (I'm so cripplingly shy, especially around attractive girls, that I don't often make a lot of sense.) She said, "no, I -love- the way you talk, it's just like the way I write. Do you write?" And I said, yeah, I like writing, and she said, okay, cool, and left.
The next time, she asked me again about the writing thing and says that sometime she'd totally like to read my stuff. I tell her I'll have to give her the draft of this (shitty) novel I'm writing sometime; she says that sounds pretty great.
THE NEXT TIME: she's standing way over at one end of a hallway waiting for me to approach, and when I do she says, "hey, are you doing anything this weekend? We should hang out. We can talk about writing and also about how we're depressed." I manage to get out that I'd definitely be into hanging out with her, and she says, "great, do you have a cell phone?" and I fumble for mine but then she suddenly says "OH, WAIT, I DON'T HAVE MY CELL PHONE WITH ME. BUT IT'S OKAY, I'M SURE I'LL SEE YOU AROUND BEFORE THIS WEEKEND."
The weekend comes and goes, and -naturally- I don't run into her. By this time, of course, I'm no longer walking around because I'm depressed but solely because I want to run into her.
I plug her name into facebook and find her AIM address, sending her a friendly message saying, "hey, you know that guy who wanders around the dorms at midnight, the one people think is insane? I'm him!" I get no response.
Two or three weeks later, I run into her in the hallway again, and she says, "hey, we never hung out that weekend, we should do that!" Then she adds, "also, I got your instant message and, frankly, it kind of disappointed me." And I think: the hell?
She drags me to her dorm room and starts lecturing me about how the fact that I think people think I'm insane shows that I lack self-esteem. She says that I just need someone who can boost my confidence, and that I also need friends to hang out with, and that I should take care of that. She adds, I'll totally give you my e-mail address so you can e-mail me the draft of that novel you said you'd send me, too, but she doesn't actually give it to me, even though I'm right in her dorm room and, uh, I'm pretty sure she could have if she had really wanted to. I chalk it up to either absentmindedness or mind games on her part and leave.
This girl and I - we're on the same academic path, sort of thing, which means that we share two classes. They're large classes, so I rarely actually see her, though one day leaving class I'm listening to music and I see her out of the corner of my eye and I see that she's apparently staring at me but not saying anything.
I meet her again in the dorm hallway later, at the beginning of the week just prior to spring break. I'm listening to my headphones again. She suddenly says, "I saw you the other day wearing those headphones and almost talked to you but you looked busy. You know what? I have a friend who has a security blanket that she needs all the time. Your headphones are like a security blanket. You shouldn't wear them like that. They're holding you back from socializing. And you're good at socializing, you just don't realize it. I mean, you're such a sweet guy! And you have great hair!" I say, "um," because that's the kind of thing I usually say.
"See," she says, "posture is important. Take your hands out of your pockets. And look up at me. Not over there. Look at me. Look into my eyes. Eye contact."
We then kind of hold eye contact for, like, four or five seconds, and we laugh. Then suddenly a friend of hers appears out of nowhere and she's like, "see you later."
Two days later, I finish the rough draft of my novel and send it to her via facebook pm. I get no response.
I should note, also, that over this time I intermittently sent her IMs, and she only actually replied to less than half of them, and even then it was at great length.
The night before the last day of classes before spring break, I'm (for me, rarely) hanging out with some people in their room; I'm sleep-deprived from cramming for midterms and sleep deprivation makes me slightly more social. She walks into these guys' room and sits on their couch next to me and asks if she can braid my hair. (Yeah, I'm one of those weird males with shoulderblade-length hair). I say, uh, sure, and she does. Then there's a lot of (I think) accidental touching of my arm and so forth. I don't talk to her much because the other guys are dominating the conversation talking about what-the-hell ever.
At one point she says, "I started reading that thing you sent me, I read the first part already, it's pretty awesome," and I say, uh, thanks. Then she leaves and so do I. I, drunk on my sleep deprivation, send her a really weird facebook pm saying something to the effect of "we should hang out sometime, you strike me as the kind of person I could talk to" or something completely retarded like that. I regretted sending it right after doing so.
The last day of school prior to spring break, I went to take a last exam and walking out of the exam room I, yes, see her AGAIN, she took the same test, we talk briefly about how much it sucked and leave.
Over spring break I send her a couple of random IMs that go ignored. I am paranoid that perhaps she read my weird message and decided I was too weird/desperate/clingy/whatever, but one day I say something like, "I love all these one-sided conversations I have with you," and she suddenly says, "oh god, please, I hate AIM because I'm too lazy to type. I'm unreliable at the internet thing!" I then see a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY and ask her if she's good at the cell phone thing and, if so, what her number is. She gives it to me but then says "I usually don't pick up" and signs off.
Being the pansy I am, I keep her number but am way too terrified to call her. I mean, what if she doesn't pick up? What if, worse, she DOES pick up?
Spring break was last week. I spent a lot of time wrestling with and confronting the fact that I had become kind of infatuated with this girl. I had no idea whether she had been expressing interest in me or whether she had just been friendly, but thoughts of the situation were kind of torturing me.
So one day I looked myself in the mirror and said, "stop being so retarded. Walk up to her one day when you get back and tell her how you feel! Yeah! That's it!"
So now I'm back in college. Monday passed - I didn't run into her. Tuesday, we had a class together but she wasn't there, though she'd mentioned having a terrible headache the night before, in an IM, so I guess that had something to do with it.
Tonight I went walking around and ran into a mutual acquaintance. We talked about some lab that the three of us were all enrolled in and he was all, "man, the prelabs are going to suck," and I said, "yeah," and then he mentioned that the girl probably had them done, so he picked up his cell phone and casually called her, and, uh, she didn't pick up. "Damn it," he said, "let's wander around the dorms until we find her." We do this, him craning his head into every lounge and study room, and still no dice. "Oh well," he said. "Looks like we'll have to do all that work anyway."
I don't know why that affected me so strongly.
I guess it had to do with watching the guy be so confident and self-assured with, you know, calling this girl and looking for this girl, two things that I prtty much couldn't really do except in a really passive way. It only made me more determined.
But - and here's the problem - determined to do WHAT?
The class I'd been kind of hoping to see her in on Tuesday meets again on Thursday. I think she...should be there? If she is, I'm trying to talk myself into doing something BOLD AND DARING like intercepting her as she's leaving, even if it's with her friends.
Would it be weird if I asked her, "can I talk to you alone for a moment?"
And then what would I say? I don't want to come off as too weird. I'm not going to tell her I'm INFATUATED with her, more like, you know, I kind of like her, becasue she's so, uh, perceptive? That she has, for some reason or another, totally figured me out vis-a-vis my lack of confidence/social skills/whatever? Should I ask her to go do something? I mean, I don't know! I have little experience in talking to girls! IS she interested in me or is this bizarre wishful thinking on my part that will all end in tears? Is it bad that she's apparently already got me pegged as shy dude who can't interact with people normally?
It's 1:49 AM; I have lab at 9:00 tomorrow morning, so I'll stop here. I apologize for the length.
