Maybe This Time

Halloween

Falling in love is the most disgusting experience of human existence, I'm sure of that.
Well, if I'm completely honest, it's not exactly falling in love, that's the problem. If we're completely honest I have never come so far to call what I had worthy of the word "love".
If I'm being absolutely honest (and I promised to myself I would be, because what is the point of the written word if it merely reflects a lie masking as report of that happened), what I'm talking about could be better described as a crush.
And now it's probably obvious, why the ominous, but much more elegant description of what I'm experiencing has passed my lips so much more easily.

I hate the word "crush" almost as much as the experience of having one. I hate, hate, hate it. Which is why I had made a pact with myself to not let any irrational feelings take over my existence ever again, to not care so deeply about people I barely know, to not make a fool of myself trying to impress someone who is, objectively speaking, in no way, shape or form my superior.

That was the pact. The promise. The oath. The very one I held for a good four months and then broke within barely a few minutes.

Actually - to give myself at least some credit - I was stronger for much longer. It wasn't immediately when I met them that I fell head over heels into a puddle of hormones and desparation.

I mean, was I super happy any time I got the chance to see them? Absolutely. Was I unable to hold any kind of conversation with them, because I thought whatever I had to say could never be cool enough for a person so divine to hear? Sure. Did I catch myself staring at them from across the room, because they are an absolute work of art and I want to soak everything they radicate up into myself, because it feels like such a necessity to bear witness of every action they take? Quite possibly, yes.

But a crush? A desire to have a romantic relationship with them? Absolutely not. I mean, why on earth would that be happening? I barely know them. And of course there was the pact. The promise. The oath. It couldn't happen again. It wouldn't.

I think I made it well through September and into October while still totally blocking out whichever implications all of this could had. Never even dared to have one thought about it. And now that I am conscious of my feelings I very much know, why I ignored them for so long.

"Having a crush" is nothing that should happen to you at the ripe old age of nineteen years. Okay, maybe a little one, but not to the extent where all of a sudden I am fourteen years old again and don't know how to talk to a random person or have all my waking thoughts consumed by the idea of them. It is simply not something I signed up for at this age.

Apart from everything else it is also super impractical. I have stuff to do, essays to write, subjects to study. But how is any of this interesting when I have made contact with the most amazing person on this planet and could think of them again?

But then there is also moments where all the imagination fades away and I find myself in the dull reality that is relatively unchanged. Like right now, where I am placed in a wooden chair that, as far as I found out, has no way of being placed in comfortably.

Somehow have gotten into the halloween party - no, the halloween party. And I only had to befriend Ben-who-I-sometimes-randomly-see-in-uni-but-have-no-courses-with, for it. Because luckily enough our nice Ben, who was fortunately super easy to talk into giving me an invitation to this party, is, coincidence has it, best of friends with Billie and they decided to throw a halloween party together.

Billie, if you haven't guessed it yet, is the object of my desperate desire I have whined about for the last few pages. And now we're in the same room. And I feel I might going to throw up. Or cry. Both, probably.

"Excuse me", I say quietly, as I make my way through the narrow hallway, which a few minions, Marie Antoinette and a bunny have chosen as the perfect place for a lengthy group conversation, until I finally get to the bathroom.

Which is occupied. Of course.

Can't even cry in peace here.

But what did I think would happen? Some super random conversation where Billie discovers that we are actually meant to absolutely be together for ever and ever and actually get married on the spot?

Well, "expected" might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I, personally, would have been fine with it.

No, seriously, how do other people do it? The millions of people who are absolutely in love with someone who is absolutely in love with them and who live happily ever after as the most wholesome couples on this earth?

And why, why, why can't this ever happen to me? Why do I always have to be the awkward, desperate person who is so painfully unable to find a partner?

The bathroom door opens and Wednesday Addams makes her way back to the party. I storm inside and quickly lock the door behind me as I am greeted by the most enormous mirror I have ever seen. Because I like myself so much that I want to look at all of me at once right now. Of course.

Instead I have the urge to smash the glass with my fist until I can't see the sad look in my eyes anymore, what I obviously don't do. So I am captured by my own look, the big, child-like eyes that stare at me way too intensely.

Wow, of course no one here wants to talk to me. I look as if I started screaming or crying as soon as someone even tries to talk to me.

Way to impress the coolest person you know. I bet Billie - Billie, who easily makes their way through every group of people, elegant as a fairy, talking to everyone as if they're their best friend, looking like a painting while they do it - never screams. Or cries. Or is like me in any way shape or form. Because while I now obviously do neither of those things, I can't deny that I would certainly like to. 

I know that this isn't the first time I have felt like this. Actually, a situation like this has come up with almost everyone I was ever into. But still, it's the one feeling I could never get used to.

Maybe, because there is still this awful, evil, lingering hope, the idea in the back of my head that maybe this time things are different. Maybe this time I am not just forced to live out fantasies in my head because maybe this time I actually managed to be into someone who is into me as well. And maybe this time I can actually be one of those people who can live out their happily ever after.

And then, after this hope, there's slowly the realisation that all of it was for nothing. That, actually, nothing changed to the last time or the time before. That, once again, this here is a person who doesn't actually like me back.

And that realisation really sets in in this exact moment, where I am staring into my own, disgusting, eyes in the bathroom mirror and a sick feeling rises up in my stomach. The ridiculed feeling of eternal loneliness.

And then I throw up in the toilet.

And then the thought that I have just actually thrown up in this random bathroom during this random party disgusts me so much that I throw up some more before I wash out my mouth in apathy and clean up the mess I made.

I am a desaster. Of course Billie doesn't like me. How could I ever be so stupid to believe anything different...