Under my previous username, I did some surveys and received some Diaryland notes.
And these are the surveys I've done as Footipoo, as well as the notes I've received (if any).

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6:30 pm - December 12, 2016

Enough is enough 3

First of all, point to note: At this very minute of typing THIS paragraph, it's been over 3 hours from the actual happening, so my mood has already stabilised substantially. The “bad” thing is this entry thus won’t accurately reflect the angst I was feeling some 3.5 hours ago, but the “good” thing is it will be a more rational self-reflection on the happening.

The crux of the matter? I’ve put myself on the emotional roller coaster - AGAIN. It’s so damn frustrating. It has been about 3 months in the making, and through it all, the rational part of me occasionally pipes up, “What the hell are you doing? How can this lead to anything – who are you trying to kid?” and also warns, “You KNOW how this will end up, right? - you KNOW the frustration and stupidity you’re eventually going to feel when, in spite of yourself, you’re strapped on the emotional roller coaster ride and do daft things that actually affect no one except yourself, right?” But that voice is largely silenced / ignored by the part of me that’s happy to be in denial, to pretend everything is great in lala land. In summary? I walked into this with my eyes - wide - shut.
I predicted this inevitable frustration with every step I took, but I continued to take step after step anyway.
Eyes fucking wide shut.
I had this coming.

You know what? As I was writing the above, I decided to read some old entries here in which I KNOW I whined about the same damn thing (and that’s how I got to deciding that this entry’s title should – obviously – be “Enough is enough 3”), and I’m shaking my head as I read the old entries. I really WAS whining about the same damn thing; a lot of the things I wrote were exact descriptions of my frustrations now. And the scary thing is this latest episode seems to be “right on schedule” – it was about 5.5 years between “Enough is enough” and “Enough is enough 2”, and between the latter and today? You guessed it: 5.5 years. Goddamit. OK, look, to be honest, 5.5 years between emotional rollercoaster rides is a pretty good track record – some people have emotional ups and downs every few months, I guess? – but you’d think I would learn over the years? That I would mature? That I won’t exhibit the same emo traits, have the same moodiness, throw the same secret tantrums, take the same ridiculous actions, after a decade? But NOOOO. 10+ years on, I’m STILL the exact same person who tried so hard to convince herself, “He Doesn't Matter To Me That Much. He's Not Suited For Me Anyway. Get Over It.”
I – have – not – learnt.
I – have – not – wisened up.
At all.

OK, let’s try to just summarise today’s trigger.
But wait, that requires some background, which is probably going to be longer than a “summary” then...

So I have a crush on a student. Let’s call him L. The crush escalated quickly because we have each other’s mobile numbers, and we do because he and another student and I formed a WhatsApp group out of necessity some 8 months ago when they volunteered for a school video that I was tasked to choreograph. By the time the video thing was over, he ended up in my Maths class in the new term, during which he seemed to be warming towards me, a few times staying back after class just to chat for hours. AND on top of that he and his friend had weekly dance lessons with me for over a month. By then, I was warming towards him (too?). Near the end of that term, he requested for access to an empty room for his group to do design work in their non-class hours, which I easily acceded to, and I stayed back late with them all but once, officially in the name of shielding them from being chased out by security, but in actual fact really simply just for him. Around the time of these late nights, our very-often WhatsApping started. There was no sexting of course, and I don’t think even any flirting (not that I’m aware of, and you know I’m oblivious to such things), but most of it was friendly banter/chat completely unrelated to school. Sometimes the back and forth went on for hours, sometimes up to the wee hours past 1am. The term after that (which is this term, now in Exam Week), I made a point of putting his class in my schedule, but while we didn’t have post-class chats, our texting continued very much unabated. And we even had dinner a few times, just the two of us. I even gave him priority invite to have dinner with me on my birthday (without telling him it was that) though he declined due to work deadlines; and when we did have dinner a few days later, I let on that the day of the rejected dinner was my birthday, and he exclaimed semi-regretfully several times, “You didn’t tell me!”

Anyone would say this is inappropriate. In my mind, I wave away that thought by reasoning that our “friendship” has never spurred me to mark unfairly. I think it’s pretty obvious to his classmates I’m playing favouritism, but like I said, I’ve always graded fairly. What else seems inappropriate, though? If the draft of his CV is to be believed, he’s born in 1995. Christ. But I can’t help myself because he seems to keep coming to me. Not coming ON to me, but coming to me. He reaches out to me as often as I do him, and with equal friendliness, with similar lack of reserve despite our “actual” roles in school.

Little things that made me think he has a crush on me too:
- His staying back during Maths days – he’d take his bag and look like he was leaving very slowly, all the while chatting, but eventually inch back, settle in a chair, and just keep talking.
- The messaging marathons that sometimes ended at wee hours.
- His talking about us on equal ground in his messages, joking that “we” are smart, “we” would get rich together, etc – at the most recent dinner, he was speaking of his plans to buy an apartment back home and said “we” should get a condo first as part-residential-part-office – I took it that his “we” must mean him and family or friends-cum-business-partners, but at one point he repeated his ask for agreement (“right?” or “hor?” or something) on his idea and paused as if the “we” was actually us and he wanted my opinion, and I really didn’t want to assume or clarify so just chuffed, “...Why are you asking me?!”
- His voluntarily looking for me even when we don’t have class, recently asking if we could just work in a room together, and also his speaking of a slightly longer assurance of future contact even though we definitely won’t have classes together again (e.g. joking of booking 3000 hours at the Workshop, of my being his communications manager for his future business, etc).
- The little things he would give me – they’re unimportant, but they’re limited quantity or the only one he had, and maybe coveted by his friends, and he would choose to give it to me.
- His recent couple of attempts at “skinship” with me, tapping at my arm while speaking, NOT for the purpose of getting my attention since we were already chatting to begin with.
- The food he’s most recently brought me, which suggests that he’s thinking of me even at home, or at work (yes, I think he works at a cafe though he refuses to say).

Signs that are obvious I am on one of those irrevocable crushes that would eventually frustrate me:
- My acceptance of / participation in all the above listed
- My being jealous of a girl he mentions on occasion (let’s call her Cat), whom he’s been friends with since start of school here, with whom he’s said that, together with another girl no longer in this school, they form a close group and seem to read one another’s minds (note: I never really warmed to Cat during research class because the two girls never paid much attention, though they COULD get by just on their language skills alone)
- My getting jealous of a girl he always sat with
- My Facebook-stalking him, stumbling across a passage in which he seems to be declaring his love for someone, and my feeling slightly jealous (but not as jealous as in the above two situations, because this FB thing is 2 years old)
- My imagining all sorts of future scenarios with him – like I said in the entry about Jem, “I have lived a small lifetime with him... on the one hand enjoying the details, on the other reminding myself it is all unlikely to happen.”
...and the last is the one I hate most about myself...
- My having gone on mood swings because of little things, to the point that I have muted and unmuted our WhatsApp chat several times in these months – muted when something pissed me off, unmuted when I have gotten over it myself. As of this moment, it’s muted again. Because of today. Which is why I’m writing all this.

So. Today’s trigger.
Today actually started well. He messaged me in the morning, asking to meet at the door so he could pass me something, which turned out to be a slice of cake, which I suspect must have come from the cafe at which he works at weekends.
After I returned to desk, I messaged thanks again (in part to keep a “documentation” of his having given me a cake – just look at me! jeez), and asked when he was flying off for the holidays. The message never delivered though. I was a teeny bit worried for a while, like he just gave me something then turned off his phone, but I knew it was a silly worry. Perhaps the wifi was weak; perhaps, even, he decided to fly off early and was already preparing to leave and had his phone off.
At 2.30pm, I went to the classroom in order to collect essays. As I was leaving the staff room, I briefly passed by Cat at a waiting table and we smiled vacuously. As I was going up the stairs, I still remember thinking to myself about the cake, thinking, yes, he may have liked someone 2 years ago, yes, he may always sit with a girl perhaps because he had things to learn from her, and yes, he may be good friends with Cat whom I could never truly like, but I think he likes me now. If not, why else [all the above listed]?? When I got to the room and was swarmed by the group, I was slightly surprised to see him there as well (since he submitted the essay last week and so didn’t need to be here this week). I was almost sorry I didn’t plan on opening the classroom in case there was a chance he was going to hang out for hours again. But it made no sense to suddenly decide to open the room and sit in there for ages, and everyone was surely eager to leave after submissions, including him.
So I just collected the essays as everyone bantered, happy it was their last class/submission. L managed to get in a sentence, saying he was here for the attendance, to which I replied he didn’t have to be since he’d submitted last week. While saying that, he walked across me from my right to my left and out of my line of sight. Then as I was still collecting and bantering with the rest, I briefly turned to my left to peek at where he might be and I saw:

*L with Cat on his right, their backs to me, already walking to the lifts, his right arm firmly enveloping her, she slightly “squished” against him.*

I immediately turned back to the rest and continued with banter, and at the next brief turn, I saw:

*L with his right arm draped over Cat’s right shoulder as they continued walking towards the lifts.*

And so here I am.
Strangely enough, when I first saw the two “snapshots” of them, I didn’t feel my heart sinking or anything like that. And by the time I left the group behind and took the stairs down, I was still just thinking, “OK, so it’s like that. I guess it’s clear now.” I was disappointed, but it felt a bit like a relief that reality was obvious now, that there was finally something concrete to convince me to snap out of my fantasies.
But by the time I got back to desk, I felt like I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. If he didn’t actually like me, wouldn’t he think that our recent communications were inappropriate or slightly... weird, and so not responded so much, maybe even tried to put an end to it? Even if this show with Cat (who must have followed me upstairs after seeing me leave the staff room, ugh!) WAS his way of putting an end to it, then why the cake in the morning? And then I thought, this had BETTER not be his attempt to make me jealous, because that’s absolutely the wrong thing to do, because something like this would only serve to start me on the path to convincing myself to keep my distance. And I can be very good at convincing myself of that, if entirely necessary. Look at how I am with Jem now.

I muted our WhatsApp chat. Later on, when I saw that he had in fact replied, I archived the chat without actually opening to read it, especially since I could figure out from the message preview that he was replying about something schedule-related, not anything personal. Strangely, I had an urge to execute a choreography with wild abandon (Taemin's Sayonara Hitori), alone in a room, to loud music. It must have been a desire to throw myself into something just to take my mind off this.

After muting the chat, what I did next, oddly enough, was to spend over an hour reading on the Net about Scorpio jealousy. What started it was the constant thought that if this was his way of making me jealous, it was the wrong move. And I was curious to see if that was a typical Scorpio thought. By the time I’d read for an hour, I wasn’t nearly as frustrated as when I’d started. But I was also slightly concerned. Am I exhibiting typical Scorpio jealousy? Is that what my initial reaction is? Does that mean that there are many other people who WON’T have reacted that way? I found it hard to imagine that there would be people who, upon seeing someone they liked with his arm around someone else, would not immediately think dark thoughts, would just think, oh look at how they are such good friends and I’m not in the least concerned! But if there are such people, and they are the norm, then am I really prone to overreacting? To possessing? To dark jealousy? My frustration at the earlier sight was sort of overshadowed by self-doubt. And a part of me was starting to believe maybe it’s that – maybe they ARE such good friends and he’s just that close and comfy with her (and if the other girl was still here, they’d all be in a group hug, meh).

But there are two strongly opposing thoughts I can’t get my head around:
1) Surely ANYONE seeing two people in those poses/positions would assume they were a couple, not platonic friends? I can't be overreacting?
2) If he’s a couple with her, what the hell was he doing messaging me to the wee hours, spending free time with me, having dinner with me???

It’s driving me mad.
And I think he has no clue what happened. Whether he and Cat are close and platonic and he likes me but didn’t know I might see them and misinterpret, or whether he’s a couple with Cat and didn’t know or care that I saw them, I don’t think he knows the extent to which I’m now spiralling because of it.
I think if I continue to ignore his messages, he wouldn’t message further either. The last time I didn’t read his muted archived message for days (over something FAR more trivial than this), he didn’t write more until I finally wrote again (and I did because I realised I was being stupid). But I do believe it’s not because he’s good at mind games; I think it really is just that he has a laissez-faire attitude to most things.

I’m really not annoyed at him. At the core of it all, I always thought this was futile anyway. He’s a 1995er, for fuck’s sake.

What I am, is – again – angry at myself for allowing this to happen to myself.

Why do I never fucking learn.

*holds head in hands*


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