At Least I Took the Chance
I confessed my feelings to my crush.
I had liked him for ten months and had been wanting to shoot my shot for the better of eight. He and I were strangers, but we saw each other several times a week at campus. The encounters were enough to make an impression on me and my friends.
He and I never talked.
Only exchanged shy glances. Deliberately marked each other’s presence with avoidance or attention — the way neither of us treated other strangers. No matter what his feelings were, he had made it clear for much too long (not just to me) that there was something about me that caught his eye.
After months without any real progress, I decided that I no longer wanted to wait for him to make a move. So I decided to take action.
The way I proceeded was unconventional.
I wrote a letter on fancy paper, pouring out my honesty in my signature charm. I added all the necessary information as well as my phone number and a note saying that he could safely ignore it should he not feel the same. He should understand, I wrote, that I was merely taking a chance.
That Thursday, a friend of mine approached him with the envelope. Seconds later, the letter had been delivered.
My friends and family waited in anticipation for the inevitable answer of a man who had been on my mind for months.
Instead, he never responded.
When I took this chance, I made a choice.
For months, I chose not to do anything. I allowed my fear of rejection or ridicule to claim control of my actions (or lack thereof). For months, this choice haunted me in a thousand questions starting with What if.
What if he actually did like me, and I was missing out? What if he ended up with someone else because I waited too long? What if I could move on from this constant state of nervousness and longing by just taking a step?
I chose to do something about it, then. I wrote a letter and had it delivered. The weeks after, I felt disappointed and frustrated — even somewhat angry.
But I never felt regret.
Which was the greatest relief.
Sadness is a fleeting emotion. Disappointment may be altered through a new perspective. The love that comes with a crush will escape with time.
But regret is hard. Regret doesn’t care that things could have gone poorly. Regret only cares that your life could have been better had you taken the chance to make it so.
The experience with my crush made me think.
If I could choose between the pain of a thousand unanswered questions and the relief of a single definitive answer, I would always choose the latter.
After all, I did not know what the outcome would be. I was fearing the negative and hoping for the positive. But even the outcome I had feared was ideal to the potential that I was missing out on something good.
If I had decided not to act, my future would have been in someone else’s hands. But the fact that I decided to make that move myself, I took control of the situation and shaped my own future.
No longer did I have to yearn and dream. No longer did I have to be nervous and afraid. I could finally turn my back on this once-grand hurdle and focus on other, more important things.
In the end, I was rejected.
I laid my feelings bare and saw them unreturned. I cast my net out on the waters without getting a single catch.
But I do not regret anything.
Because, in the end, I got my answer. In the end, I exchanged my pain and worry for relief and acceptance. I gained all the more in return, despite the fact that the man I had liked for ten months never responded.
At least I took the chance.
