I’ve been wanting to answer this question for weeks, but I couldn’t. I had to approach my own crush first. Now, I can tell you this story.
A few weeks before Christmas I noticed a beautiful girl showing up to the study room regularly. She was just over 5′, had long, dark hair, toned skin and was wearing a smile most of the time.
My usual spot is across the door, so every time she walked in I tried to smile back at her.
A couple of times, she smiled back. Every time she walked through that door again, be it into the room or out, I felt the tension inside me get a little stronger.
One early February night, as I was getting on the subway, listening to music, holding my book, I bumped into her.
The cabin was packed and I was distracted, so I got on and turned around to face the door to save space. But in the blink of an eye, I caught a glimpse of her. My brain went into overdrive:
“Fuck! Why did you turn around? What do you do now? Do you turn around again? Is that weird? Is it weird not to? Ah screw it at least show her you recognized her.”
I awkwardly turned back around and smiled at her. I think she smiled back, but I don’t even remember, because I felt embarrassed. Luckily, she got off at the next stop anyway.
After that moment, the inner pressure from not talking to her became almost unbearable. Almost.
The next weekend, I did something I’m proud of:
I escalated the pressure I put on myself until I couldn’t NOT talk to her.
It’s like procrastinating at work: you might as well procrastinate into the thing you’re putting off.
It took me 1.5 days of half-assed learning and immense kicking myself until I finally did something about it. My “prep work” included:
- Reading some amazing Quora answers to this question.
- Remembering the line “You’ll embarrass yourself if you say something and you’ll embarrass yourself if you don’t.” from the movie We Bought a Zoo.
- Listening to the theme song of the movie over and over again.
- Re-watching this clip.
- Reminding myself that I’d regret it forever if I didn’t talk to her.
On Sunday afternoon two weeks ago (February 12th, 2017), I was standing outside the study room in the hallway, scrolling through Instagram, looking for a quote I had remembered. A few minutes later, I was staring at this:
When I looked up, I saw one of her friends come back from the toilet. I walked up to him and said…
Me:“Excuse me, the girl that’s with you, do you know if she has a boyfriend?”
Him:“The short one with the dark hair? Nah, she doesn’t, why?”
Me: “Well, I’ve been kicking myself for a while now, because I really want to ask her out for a coffee, but I wasn’t sure if she was with someone already.”
Him: “No no, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. You should ask her! She won’t rip your head off. I think she’ll be happy about it!”
I don’t know whether it was what he said or the confidence I’d gotten from asking him about her, but I walked back into the room right behind him, to the place where she was sitting, squatted next to her chair and started talking:
Me: “Hi, do you have a minute?”
Her: “Uhm, sure, what’s up?”
Me: “I’m Nik, what’s your name?”
Her: “Canan.”
Me: “Nice to meet you Canan!”
*awkward handshake*
Me: “Will you be around for a while?”
Her: “Yeah, I have big plans today, haha!”
Me: “Good, because I was wondering if you wanted to grab a coffee later maybe?”
Her: “Sure!”
Me: “Awesome, how about 4:30?”
Her: “Cool!”
Later that day, we got coffee, took a walk and talked about school, life, death and all kinds of stuff. She added me on Facebook and a week later, we traded numbers.
Eventually, she said she’s not looking to date someone because she’s going on exchange abroad in September and hates long distance stuff.
Does the story end here? I don’t know. Where will it go? I have no idea.
But if I hadn’t kicked myself until I finally had to do something about it, I wouldn’t even have a shot at finding out.
Plus, I couldn’t have told you this story. And I think it’s a good one. Do you?
