It figures that just when I’m about to write down an important revelation, something comes up. So let’s see if I can catch what I was talking about.

Oh, OK, here we go. I realize that I have no idea what to do when I like someone. At most, I try talking with her as much as is seemly, but eventually I will get boring and every time I talk to her on the phone or have lunch with her, I worry she will begin to be repelled by me. In time, she will wonder what is it I want, and I won’t be able to give an answer without tripping over my tongue and making a fool of myself and that will be the end of the story.

I am too passive. But I am afraid. I know in reality that no woman can be completely naive about what a guy wants, but sometimes I think that’s really part of my charm, the illusion that I may be some sort of novelty in this sex-obsessed culture of ours.

Which leads me to an earlier revelation. I am mostly convinced that I will not grab a woman’s attention via physical attraction, though I know to a certain extent that this isn’t really true (or that at least there was a point in time that it wasn’t) and it is perhaps easy to ascribe it to my low self-esteem, but I don’t think I’m really selling myself short. I know for a fact that uglier men than I can be babe magnets in any case.

This is merely an expansion of my “nice guy” theory [which is, I suppose, not exactly the same but very closely related to the niceguy. Like, I don’t think I’m entitled to sexual favors, at least.] The one who ends up in the friend zone, the one all the girls like, but the one they wouldn’t really contemplate sleeping wiht. Well. There are guys that women want to sleep with and there are guys that women want to know about just for the sake of knowing, and on a relatively improbable level, these two planes intersect. More commonly, though, I think most relationships begin with one of the other. The sexual conquest that turns out to be interesting after all or the good friend who turns out to be a good lover, too. [And] I am not one of those guys whom woman wuld pursue just to sleep with.

[I like to imagine] that at least a couple of women [have found] something interesting about me. They want to get in my head, just for the sake of curiousity. Now, the thing I fear: once they figure me out, they will be disappointed… [T]he challenge [is] to find out what it is they find so interesting. Because I have no fucking clue.

Let’s recap: to salve my ego… [if a woman is attracted to me, it’s usually due to] intellectual curiosity. So… I have to stay interesting. I feel like a blind man swimming, looking for a ring of gold.

[I worry a lot about making things unnecessarily weird. I am deathly afraid of expressing romantic/sexual interest when someone just wants to be friends with me.] The thing is, how do I deal with rejection? In typical fashion, I have come to regard these things as a sort of all-or-nothing scenario. And so right now, I prefer this existential limbo, giving excuses [for] my current situation. But I know they’re just excuses.

But I’d rather not push things to another crisis. I will let Entropy have her way with things and somehow I must grow accustomed to this gnawing emptiness.

So. Why do I keep bothering her? Because at the least I want to know what it is she sees (and if there really is anything to see.) I had this strange quasi-dream about her, having a conversation on [this very topic]. She asked me why I keep calling her, and I [span title=”edit • 2015-08-17 11:01 PDT”>explained that I just wanted to know why she thinks I am worth knowing.</span>]

Yes. I have very severe self-esteem problems. I have no idea how to solve them.

[But I have this very persistent illusion that she gets me, groks exactly who I am. No fantasies, no illusions.] It could be because of some strange geometry of chance, or it could be because she has this knack with almost everyone. ([I’m not necessarily special.]) Times like this, [what I really want to ask her is] how I should live my life. But even now, I have no idea how to talk with her. I feel like I’m trying to climb a sheer wall lined with Teflon.

So that’s that. It’s really kind of depressing, but it might just be the seasonal affective disorder speaking.

No. This is what the problem is. It’s just like any wound. It takes a finite amount of time for it to heal, there’s nothing I can really do to speed it up, and the best I can do is get used to it for now. But it’s not forever, it will eventually heal, things will eventually get better, but I don’t know when, I don’t know how. It’s so out of my control that I feel like giving up, but you can’t just craw up and die if you get get hurt. Like if you break your leg [while snowboarding] you wait the torturous weeks for it to heal, then you go out snowboarding again.

It’s so easy to say. So at the least, maybe I have a little insight on what it’s like to have to wait to get well. If you’re still drawing breath, there’s always hope, right? Of course, [nothing is] ever that simple.