lucy, the evil, heartless bitch: part three

previously on LtEHB:
prologue
drinking game
part one
part two


I really need to hurry up with this story so I can figure out how to reply to S’s email…
So, I did my best to be as non-committal as I could, without completely ruling out the possibility that I would consider dating him at some future point, if we ever met, but right from the beginning S’s demeanour and behaviour made me doubt that he’d actually heard all the disclaimers I’d included. I reminded him of my hesitations as often as I could, but he still seemed confident that they’d all disappear as soon as we met. I wanted to believe him and I felt bad constantly trying to deflate his optimism, so over time I convinced myself that he’d heard all my expressions of doubt enough that I didn’t need to repeat them so often.
I’m playing up all the doubts I had at the time because in hindsight, that’s what stands out to me, but obviously there were things that made me more inclined to ignore those doubts and believe in S’s vision of how things were/would be. S was incredibly sweet and supportive and understanding of my non-existent self-esteem and constant anxiety about social interactions. And I really felt comfortable talking with him. Probably a big part of that was that it was pretty obvious he liked me enough to put up with my whining, though, and that made me feel guilty about using him again, even though I tried to be understanding and supportive about his problems, too. Actually, the fact that I was consciously trying made me feel guilty, too.
At this stage, I was in my honours year (a year of full-time lab research, post-bachelor’s degree), but I was still IRCing with S as much of the day as possible (my current work habits are not exactly a new thing). Eventually, we started using voice chat occasionally and I’d sneak out of lab so he could call me sometimes. The phone conversations didn’t exactly allay my fears that I wouldn’t be interested in real life. I found it much harder to talk out loud, compared to on IRC and large portions of the time we were on the phone were spent in silence. And a fair bit of the remaining time was spent commenting on the birds he could hear in the background, since I’d generally be sitting outside to talk. I don’t actually remember what we talked about when we were talking. It definitely wasn’t anything as personal as when we talked online.
After talking more and more, understandably, he felt like things were moving forward and he started to talk more seriously about the idea of us having a future together. What I really wanted was for everything to pause until we could meet in person and see if anything was even real. In my mind, everything he thought was developing was still hypothetical and dependent on what happened when we met. I tried to keep reminding him of that, but I hated upsetting him by being too negative all the time, so I probably went along with him more than I should have. It was hard for him to believe that I didn’t have any better idea of whether I’d still feel the same way in real life than I’d had in the beginning.
Occasionally, he would say he loved me and, while it was very nice to hear, I’d feel incredibly uncomfortable because I couldn’t say it back and I didn’t know how to react. By the time we’d been talking for something like 9 months, he was saying it more frequently and also asking me what I felt more.
It’s hard to identify a feeling you’ve never had before. I’d never felt that attraction for anyone that makes the difference between wanting to be friends or more and I’d certainly never been in love, but then, I hadn’t even had a close friendship where I felt safe enough to be honest about my thoughts or feelings. It was difficult to be sure that the affection and friendship and care I felt didn’t add up to love. I tried to explain how I did feel to S, but to him, my descriptions matched his own feelings. I knew there was still something missing from how I could imagine feeling if I were sure, as well as from what I saw of his feelings, but I couldn’t articulate what the missing piece was. Since I couldn’t adequately explain why how I felt wasn’t love, he stuck to his theory that I was just unable to believe that everything really was perfect and wonderful and my anxiety was just blocking my true feelings. I tried to convince myself that the fact that I could imagine feeling more than I did, meant that I would feel that way once we met.
In the end, my guilt and unhappiness at continuing to hurt him led me to allow myself to be convinced that once we met I’d realise that everything really was the way I wanted it to be and I’d be sure. So, once again with a huge array of disclaimers, and only after I’d extracted from him an admission that he’d rather hear what he wanted now and have it turn out not to be true than either never hear it or wait until we met and I was sure, I said I loved him too. (Stupid, stupid, Lucy!)