The story:
Before I arrived at college, I found a few people who were from the same city as me. Out of them there was a girl, S, that I was attracted to. I was extra nice to her during my first week out here and I made it very obvious. After my first week of getting here I made out with a different girl, D, because I felt like whatever I felt for S was very superficial and I'd rather be with someone who was into me than pathetically keep on trying to get someone that wasn't into me. Following this line of thought, after we first made out, D asked me how it'd work because I liked S and I told her that "I'm choosing to be here with you right now.". Now there's another person from my city, N, that we only met once we got here, and she integrated herself into the friend group. N noticed that I liked S, and constantly warned me not to go for S because that'd mean "my friend group will fall apart and I don't want to either of you to get in a situation where it gets awkward between the two of you.". Later on, when I had been making out with D, N noticed my behaviour around D changed. She confronted me about it, and I told her the truth. She told me "this is for the better because S doesn't like you", at which point I chose to detach myself from the situation and get some alone time. I walked away to gather my thought which made N panic and say things along the lines of how S had told her that in confidence and how she fucked everything up by telling me and that she shouldn't have. So in order to fix her "mistake", she went and told S everything. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. She had no right to do so, and yet she did. I was forced to have a conversation with S about my superficial crush on her and about my relations with D, to which she said that I should stop looking for a "physical release", which is a thought I internalised due to my experiences in 12th Grade. I thought I was going back to my days of hooking up, which I didn't want to do anymore because that would just destroy me emotionally. I decided to end things with D and then I thought everything would be sorted. The day after I had the conversation with S, V approached me asking me if anything was going on between me and D, and I told him the truth as well, and then we started figuring out how I should end things with D. I wanted V to reason with me but due to miscommunication he had the understanding that he should support me regardless of whatever decisions I was making in this scenario. There, due to my conversations with V and me trying to make myself feel better about this entire situation, I had another idea, that D was on a "power trip", i.e. she knew I liked someone else and she wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment, which is a very stupid thought in hindsight. That night I ended things with D over text and the next day I asked her to meet me up and I told her some of this stuff and she was visibly raging. V kept me company before and after she was there and he was very supportive to me.
Despite this fuck up, I was hopeful, and things got better for a couple days, until one day N was being super mean to me so I gave her space and confronted her later when I dropped her off to her dorm. At that point she told me she heard (from V as I later found out, because that's what he understood due to another miscommunication) that I referred to D and S as "options", which I did not. And N added that she did not like the fact that she "liked" such a person. N confessed to me at that point, and I walked away after making sure she was okay. She had caught feelings for me because "you're like me" and after the first no-RHH night (a day ago) that I spent walking around with her and singing guitar songs with her and allegedly dropping hints, but the only thing that could've been misconstrued as a hint was the fact that I held her hand for 3 seconds too long because I thought she was going to trip on her shoes for the umpteenth time that night. I was sleep deprived so I didn't notice that and I held on for a few extra seconds. Over the course of the next week, me and N walked around the campus holding hands a couple times and N told me "whatever this is, it feels nice, so let's keep doing this for now and we'll have an actual conversation about this 5 months down the line". I agreed with her on this to her face even though my real intention was to figure out what I felt towards her and have a conversation a week in. N also asked for the two of us to not mention whatever we were upto to anyone, which I respected but she didn't because she ended up telling V. I noticed V being weird to me but then I didn't think too much about it. N later told me she told V and I was like "Okay, V is a friend, but next time talk to me before talking to a 3rd party" which she then agreed to. Throughout the course of whatever we were doing was, I would flirt with N and then jokingly say things like "I'm going to hell for this" which affected her, made her feel like my "plaything" and made her feel sub-human. In hindsight, I should've been more empathetic because i knew she liked me and that's a very sensitive topic in itself. I fucked up. But if she had told me about how these comments made her feel, I would've stopped immediately, except she refused to communicate with me and basically told the entire friend group and then they all started avoiding me for a couple weeks, at the end of which I got a piece of N's mind. N also talked about how I flirted with S right in front of her, whereas the only instance of such behaviour was me booking flight tickets with S to go back for Diwali, and even that because I didn't wanna sit alone on the plane. N also called my idea of love (if you spend enough time with someone and form enough of an emotional connection, trust and reliability between each other, that's when you'd fall in love, and that it could happen between ANY 2 people) that I mentioned to her on our 2nd walk problematic. I can see why because from her side of the story, I kept leading her on and giving her false hope which is extremely cruel on my part. Once again, I should've been more empathetic and I can NOT be excused for such behaviour. But I wish she'd talked to me and mentioned all of this beforehand instead of getting me cut off from the group and keeping all of her emotions buried in her until she finally erupted.
On a different tangent, there was another scenario where, during the night of the club fair, I was with the group that N and S are a part of, and a new person, R, was hanging out with us. Now the fact is, I would leave the group to do my own thing every once in a bit but R would stick with me the entire time. It was the 2nd no-RHH night and me and R continued hanging out even after the event, and she got a cold coffee from a place I had never gotten it from prior to this event, and she asked me to try it. I pointed out the existence of a singular straw and she smiled at me and said "Okay, use it :D" which I found a little unusual. I spoke to another friend and he told me that she probably feels comfortable around me and that I shoudln't think about it too much. In my mind I thought that if she feels comfortable I should try being better friends with her, so I invited her up to the same place for the same coffee and pointed out how we shared straws the last time around. My intention was to get a different cup for myself and have a conversation with her and maybe we could be friends if we hit it off but I miscommunicated my intention to be a date, on her end. She told me 30 mins before we were supposed to meet that she had a quiz the next day and that she was studying in her dorm for it and that she couldn't make it. Forward to 30 minutes after we were supposed to meet, I see her arrive in my periphery and don't acknowledge her because I didn't want to make it awkward, but she notices me and then proceeds to run the fuck away with another friend she was there with. Another 30 minutes later, I see her in my periphery again at the library and she tries to avoid me at all costs even then because she didn't want to be caught in the lie as one would presume. I confronted her about why she'd lie to me over text later that night, and apparently I came off as aggresive, and it was also later pointed out to me that when people lie to me I shouldn't think too much about it because apparently that's normal and that no one owes me an explanation. I would agree with this usually but in this particular scenario I felt like I deserved an explanation because of the events of the previous night and then the fact that I got lied to didn't make sense and I kept overthinking about it, which was once again pointed out to be a me-problem, and not her burden to think about. She has also been going around painting this story in a very different light, making me seem like a creepy stalker while also showing off the fact that 2 guys have asked her out since coming to campus, one of them being me. She has also been slandering me, asking people to stay away from me and not be alone with me.
A week or so after this incident with R, I texted D again because I noticed her absence in campus. I wanted to make sure she was okay but she wasn't. There had been a family emergency and at that point I didn't know what to say except be supportive, which is what I did. Once she got back to campus, we walked around and had a conversation about the stuff I said to her before and these other incidents that happened in the meantime. She said she wanted to be friends with me but then she tried to kiss me again a few days later (which I didn't lean in for because of her emotional situation) and she asked me to stop "teasing" her, and a few days later she told me "I'm a very impulsive person" during a conversation (which explains this situation). I thought she was also interested in me, because why else would she spend time with me like that and try to kiss me? We did still kiss each other on the cheeks though. But then a few days later she started dry texting me, telling me that she's busy with her practicals and stuff like that. I took that to the face. D had registered for a badminton tournament that was on that weekend, and she'd call me to the practices, but then this one day I had a conversation with some people and was going to my dorm early through a different internal route (shorter) which was next to the badminton courts and I noticed her and her partner practicing. I thought I was welcome to watch so I did that but apparently she didn't like that so she made her badminton partner make me leave by telling me they needed to talk about some personal stuff, later talked about how I was stalking her and as someone else told me later, "you know more about her badminton schedule than she does" which wasn't the case. She also said I was being clingy but that's only because I was on bad terms with a lot of my first friends and she would hear me out so I felt more comfortable being around her at this point. If she didn't like that, she could've said it clearly rather than dry texting but she didn't do that and I thought she was just busy with her studies for a bit. Then another day later, I went to the library with a friend after Lunch and kept working over there at the set of cubicles near the row of sofas, and then I noticed a few of my design friends arrive and sit at th sofas, and then I dozed off for a bit, and then I woke up, and then a while later my first friend left, at which point I thought I should go say hi to my design friends. I went there, I noticed D was sitting one couch away from them, I spoke to my friends and once I was done talking to them I acknowledged D's presence and shook hands with her. Following this I asked my friends if I could sit with them and then I proceeded to work with them for a while, after which I left for food. By the time I came back they were already gone and my stuff was just there on the couch. I sat back at the couch and had my face towards the rest of the library because I get startled easily if someone sneaks up on me. D was also sitting in the same orientation and she thought I was trying to peep into her work but I was legitimately not disturbing her at all. I only spoke to her a couple times for like a couple quick questions and I continued my work. There's only one time that I looked into her laptop, it was a pdf with slides and had something about using a lab for serious purposes which I found funny so I pointed it out to her. That was the only time I was actively looking in and that too because my eyes drifted there because I had just looked up from my sketchbook. She felt uncomfortable I suppose so she asked me to face the other way on the couch, which is what I did. I actually wanted to move to a cubicle when I first noticed my friends had left but none of the ones nearby were empty. But apparently she was so uncomfortable she legitimately did expect me to move halfway across the library with ALL of my stuff. And when I didn't, she did with all of her friends. Now when someone hears this they'd think it was because I didn't move, but in reality it was R that came up to D and told her "Me and ____ are going to a study room, would you like to come?" and D replied in an affirmative.
I was vilified for things I did, and I take responsibility for them. But I was vilified for things I didn't do, and I don't like that.
There have been allegations of me clicking pictures of girls without their consent and me sexually harrassing them and staring at their tits. Well, fuck no, I didn't do any of that. And when I tried to talk about my version of the truth, I was told something along the lines of "You're making it sound like there's a specific set of people dedicated to ruining your reputation."
Well isn't that exactly what you gossip mongers were doing?
If you're going to tell a story, tell the entire truth, and only after you KNOW the entire truth. This entire situation has been more middle school than my own middle school. And I was asked to suck it up? I was told I was naive and that this is what people are like? And I was asked if I didn't get to talk to people in school?
Just because I come from a set of people that were supportive as hell, knew my shortcomings and helped me overcome them just as I helped them, instead of gossiping about it, does that make me naive? FUCK NO.
And just because I often have trouble understanding cues doesn't mean I deserve to be vilified. You do NOT know me, you don't get to talk about what kind of a person I am.
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