Tag: unrequited love

I broke up with a girl. On Valentine’s Day. Over e-mail. I know. It was bad. I knew it at the time, too, but I felt like I didn’t have any choice in the matter. She was obsessed.

Unrequited love, I know thee well old friend. I had been on the other side of it for so long it felt utterly strange to have someone want me in a way I didn’t want her. And as such, I had absolutely no idea how to deal with it. I know, this isn’t make you feel any better about what I did and how I did it, but I didn’t know another way.

We met at the Temple University Library, in the reference section. No, it wasn’t the premier hangout spot on campus, over by the microfiche machines, but it was where we both happened to be at the time. You see, she worked in that dusty archive, and I was a slave to the circulation desk upstairs, on a mission at the time to find something for a patron. I have no clue what it was after all this time, but suffice it to say I had a question about microfiche. And we met.

I would say that our eyes met across the room and we clicked instantly, but I would be lying. She was mousy and I was gangly. We both wore glasses so that meant we were supposed to be together, right? Obviously in her mind we were. I found out later that she had her eye on me since I first started working at the library, and had just been looking for her opportunity to talk to me. Oh boy.

It wasn’t like I was drowning in dates, though, so we went out. And it wasn’t horrible. Seriously, it ended in us holding hands, which was sweet, but which was also initiated by her, and I would have felt bad telling her no. That it was too soon. That I was completely unsure if there should be a second date. Yet there was, and a third, and a fourth. All because I didn’t know how to approach her to say that I didn’t want to be her boyfriend. Continue reading “I Should Have At Least Called”