I don’t usually kiss and tell, so let me tell you everything. It was on top of the list of hardest things to do, up there with trying to eat soup with chopsticks. It had nothing to do with self confidence. It had nothing to do with me having problem talking. It had everything to do with anxiety and obsession.

I don’t know when these issues started. I cannot pinpoint a start but I know that I reached the place I was in because of the accumulation of incidents that happened mainly inside the confines of my head. Let’s go back all the way to Prom night. Ahhhh the good old days when it was so hard to ask a girl to the prom that I had to have one of my best friends ask her for me. I do remember that clearly as it was around the same time I started feeling a change in my mental state. That period coincided with me starting to feel a lot more pressure from my obsessions. That period I was starting to go deep into the abyss of obsessive and illogical thought. Feeling sad and gloomy was a natural progression of causality. All my life I was playing so close to the hole, that period I fell into it.

After that university years came by, and with them university girls, and with them – what I call – romantic anxiety (yes psychology students, you can use it in your research papers, and then probably you’ll be transferred to another major). I used to think every girl was out of my league; good looking girls, normal looking girls, and girls who only look beautiful in a dark room (side note: I’m not serious, beauty is on the inside). The highest level I would achieve or consider achieving is when I crack a joke and all goes well, she laughs. Making a girl I like laugh was as far as I can reach climbing to the mountain top (the mountain top is when I ask her out). I couldn’t go any higher because anxiety would cut my oxygen supply off. I would start considering almost every single scenario that might happen if I flirted with her or asked her out. I’ll be slapped. I’ll be ridiculed. She’ll go tell her friends and they’ll have a laugh at my expense. Other people will know, and then start making fun of me. I also feared that things may get awkward, and at that period in time I wanted the acceptance and love of every single person around me, so just thinking of the possibility of someone not talking to me because I was a bit forward was excruciating. I always waited for the girl to do the first move, and by first move I don’t mean subtle hints and remarks, I mean she has to let me know it, get a marching band and announce it to the world. I wouldn’t dare take the first step. So scary a thought it was.

Everything I mentioned before was in the pre-stage. It was all in my head. Several scenarios, several outcomes, none of which was in my favor. However I need to consider the post-stage as well. Consider I did ask a girl out, I don’t know if I could have handled the rejection back then. It would have led to the same obsessive thoughts and speculations, the never-ending what-ifs. If you think about it that is also part of the pre-stage. Obsessing about what might happen after was one of the main reasons I kept my mouth shut and never tried to cross the line. I need to portray what I said in an image form. I was in a minefield and whichever way I think of going, a mine was going to go off (mines are the metaphorical obsessions, got it?). So the only thing I thought I could do was stay in my place. It was my comfort zone. Anxiety made me think I was in a minefield when in reality there were no mines. The mines were mine, a creation in my mind. So I was basically stuck in a MINDfield (No? Can we still be friends?).

I had zero relationships (unless you count the countless girlfriends I had, who had no clue we were dating, and didn’t know who I was. I always did the talking, they never answered back). Looking at the bright side, I had so much more money to spend on food as I was not having dinner for two.

However, now is a different time. I have come to terms with being rejected. It now feels good, but that took a lot of time and effort and will be the subject of another blog hopefully.

That was a piece of my mind, wishing a peace of mind to you all.