Each time I found out, I freaked out. I denied them, declared hatred, and refused to acknowledge their existence.
It's usually okay to do this in elementary school, and maybe even in middle school. But I did this until high school, and really actively worked on improving my aversion to cooties until the beginning of college. In my freshman year, a boy told me he liked me and I tried really hard not to be grossed out. It turns out that when you do that as an 18 year old, you're just being a bitch leading him on-- it's better to tell him you don't like him right away. I used to spend hours in my friend's dorm room dreading meeting him and begging her to come with me, as she laughed at me and told me to "just try it out." To this day, I feel like I wasted two months of my life pretending like I wasn't oppressed by his haughty personality and predatory possessiveness so that I could force myself to "just try it out."
At this rate, I thought I'd never be able to find someone.
I knew I was unusual, by the extent to which I detested finding out that someone liked me. It felt burdensome not only because I had no interest in the boys that ended up liking me, but because from a young age, I also had a pattern of having intense crushes that lasted for years, and it was always a very tunnel-vision experience. The pattern was that they were usually older, witty, intelligent, and very West Coast. In my lifetime, I only had a handful of boys that I liked.
Of course, the older I got, the more open I was to being curious about boys I wasn't entirely infatuated over, and could see a potential in working through. But, I always found a way to not accept anything I considered less than my ideal standard. Among other reasons, this may easily explain why I was single for nearly all my life-- I didn't give anyone a try, as if my first middle school boyfriend would mean I would have to commit the rest of my life to him.
But that was kind of what I wanted. I wasn't interested in flings or half-assed three month relationships. As a serious person, I wanted a serious relationship. And as a girl wanting a serious relationship in high school or even college, that meant it wasn't going to happen. I would scare off any boy, even if they liked me. I wanted a "serious" relationship not because I had my sights on marriage and a wedding dress, but because unless I was wholly committed, I probably wouldn't be comfortable being myself.
The unromantic fact though, is that the more time you spend with someone, the more likely you will grow on each other. At the time, I refused to let this idea dictate whether I would be open to casual dating or not. Now that I'm older, I can see the romance in a gradual love too.
Several times a week, I think about how Myself I really am in front of Cliff, especially the longer we've been together. It was something I never even fathomed because I felt that Me was such an odd, messed-up person that I would keep inside forever. I obviously still have my insecurities, like being such an out-of-ordinary recluse or an unwavering misanthrope, but one of the most defining moments when I realized that he would accept me for who I really am came very early on in our pre-dating stage... and for precisely the same insecurities I have now. Suddenly, it was so much easier to know that I actually wanted to be in a relationship.
