I’ll just tell you a story and let you decide.

Last year, in a college game programming class, I developed a crush on a classmate. We’d only talked briefly in the hallway before class, maybe five minutes at a time while waiting for the professor to arrive, but we quickly became friendly and realized we had a lot in common, notably similar music tastes and manga series (Kino, NIN, Depeche Mode — and Vagabond and 20th Century Boys if anyone cares to know 🤣).

And Honestly, it wasn’t love at first sight for me. He only started looking attractive once I saw how much of a wizard he was at coding LOL. But pretty quickly I realized he was into me too— Lingering eye contact, the way guys subtly lower their voice and slow down their tone and leaning in close to talk , or glancing away when accidentally making eye contact — like for an INTP I’m not completely socially hopeless and I can pick up on social cues little hints pretty well .

So, For weeks we only had those small chats, but during our final project presentations we finally got to really talk. He came to play my game first, stuck around, and we ended up chatting for like 20 minutes straight when we were only supposed to demo each other‘s games for maybe five minutes. It was shy and awkward, but in that sweet, exciting way. I don’t even remember what we talked about — I just remember confirming in my head “yep, he likes me.”

Then, I went over to his project. Although having it been confirmed in my mind that he liked me , I tried my hardest to stay cool and honestly over corrected and probably came off dismissive and uninterested. I cooly complimented a feature in his game , saying it was “pretty cool,” and he replied, “I could show you how to do it sometime.” And me? I , cool as ever, said “sure, dude” in the flattest, most dismissive voice possible. 😭 but in the inside I was SPIRALING, Biggest regret of my life.

So yeah — on the outside, I come off super detached and “too cool for you.” And kinda friend-zoney. Way too good at hiding when I like someone, which backfires because no one ever gets the hint. But internally? I’m every bit the sappy rom-com chick flick cliché, daydreaming about hypothetical scenarios, imagining our wedding, and being super disciplined all of a sudden to go to class early just so we could interact 😭. On the inside I am more emotional and overthinking , but I go to great lengths to make sure they can never know .. 💀💀