She had been in my class for three years and I hadn’t really spoken to her. I’ve always thought she was really cool and interesting, and I’ve always wanted to be her friend but when you’re an introvert like me and have mild social anxiety, leaving your close-knit friend group to chat to a somewhat stranger is just shy of impossible. I’m also quite risk-averse and err towards what is safe and what I know. Needless to say, I did not branch out.
It was only a few months ago that I found an identity that makes sense to me. I’m grey-asexual. I think.
To me, sexuality and attraction are still somewhat foreign but I’m attempting to understand it. I’ve known for a while now that I’m not totally straight and in trying to be more open, I allowed my imagination to run a bit wilder. That’s when I thought about what it would be like to have a crush on her. I didn’t actually have a crush on her, I was just curious as to how that scenario would play out.
I remember my first real conversation with her. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. I don’t remember what time of day it was. I don’t even remember what she was wearing. I think that the little details of that day are irrelevant because I only want to remember how that conversation made me feel and what it triggered.
Cut to my friends and I sitting on the grass outside a lab, waiting for the next lecture. She walked towards us with her friends and sat down with us. Somehow, we started to talk about relationships. It turns out, she has a boyfriend. They’ve been together for four years. Isn’t that sweet? I probably sound a bit sarcastic… The truth is that the news of her totally un-singleness was kind of a hard blow for me. For some unknown reason, I felt really hurt. It made absolutely no sense for me to feel that way because I didn’t even have a crush on her. I don’t even know her! I couldn’t understand why I was being so weird, and it drove me insane to not know. But whatever, I pushed it aside and tried to go on with my life.
It had been a couple of weeks since that first conversation, but I had to admit that I was still intrigued by her. I still wanted to be her friend so in attempt to “put myself out there”, I started to greet her regularly and strike up conversation. I would ask her questions about what TV shows she watched, what music she liked, what her family was like and what her answer was to the NPS tutorial. They were short conversations, here and there, in between lectures and over different days. Then one day, I was the last of my friend group to get to a lecture, but they had saved me a seat. I had to skirt past all of them in their seats to get to my seat and I wondered why they didn’t all just shift one seat over so that I could sit down without hassle. I was so glad that they didn’t do that though because I found myself sitting next to her. I’m not going to lie, I think my heart smiled a little.
Throughout that lecture, I really tried to concentrate but my focus kept redirecting. I was thinking about her. I realised then that I probably had a crush on her.
After the lecture, we walked out together and made idle chitchat. We ended up standing in the shade somewhere having a very lively discussion about basically everything. I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch and I say that I forgot but the truth is, I didn’t want the conversation to end. We ended up spending a good part of that day together, however, at the end of the day, the crush that I thought I had on her had lost some of its strength. I wondered if it was because she wasn’t such an enigma anymore, so I didn’t find her as intriguing. Or maybe it was the way she was talking about her boyfriend.
It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to her, but I know now that I was in denial about my feelings for her. I definitely have a crush on her. It doesn’t matter to me whether she has a boyfriend, whether she likes me or whether she’ll ever find out about this crush because I’ve realised that this crush wasn’t about her. It was about me.
I had never before in my life felt what I felt for her. This new feeling is so different but so exhilarating. In opening myself up, I’ve realised that I am actually capable of such feelings. That is so exciting! I didn’t think that I was capable of that before now. I guess she was just the right person at the right time to have catalyzed the beginning of a new era for me.
Snow | Johannesburg