Dare to Fail*

I've decided that denial works best after all. Just finished watching Ice Cream Show on channel 11, and that was a pretty mood-lifter. Of course, it also helped that I had a bowl of ice-cream (I don't think there's a lot ice-cream can't cure) with me while I watched them introduce Ben and Jerry's sundaes, so I didn't get any of those nasty withdrawal symptoms.

I thought of blogging about my shopping excursion yesterday with my mom, but then no one really wants to read about how much I love my new skirt, so instead, today's post is inspired by a friend who's afraid to tell a girl he likes that, well, he likes her. In the interests of my personal wellbeing, the guy shall not be named. Also, I remembered the many letters to Big Bro, so that's also my inspiration.

Everyone's probably suffered some form of rejection and the ensuing embarassment in their lives. I'll go with a conservative number and say at least 5 times, maybe? Anything less and I don't think you're really living at all, but that's just a personal opinion.

To personalise this post, I'll start by telling an embarssing story. Back when I was still in primary school, I once found out that a guy had a crush on me, and since I kinda liked him too, I managed to get his phone number after plying a mutual friend with barley sweets. After waiting a few days to gather courage, I dialed his number and waited in trepidation while the phone rang. Luckily for me he picked it up himself, so I didn't have to deal with the whole parents scenario. To cut a long story short, I told him who I was and asked him if he liked me, and he responded by saying "No." very curtly and hanging up the phone.

My first declaration of love and I was shot down like that. Sigh. The worst part was he's a popular guy, and I'm the nerdy type, so I probably don't need to go into detail about what happened in school the next few days after The Phonecall. Primary school wasn't that much fun after all. :p

You'd think that would've been a sobering lesson for anyone to learn. You'd also think 4 years was plenty enough for someone to not make the same mistake again. For normal people, yeah, but evidently I operate on different rules. When I was in Form 3 I found out from some friends that this guy liked me, and I also kinda liked him, so, utilising a very intricate network of friends, I managed to send a message to him asking him if he liked me. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened. :p I console myself by thinking that I saved 30 sen if I'd made the phonecall instead of using the friend network.

Obviously the term 'tak malu' has nothing on me. The point of the 2 stories is to never trust what your friends tell you, cos they're probably just bored with school life and decided to entertain themselves by watching you make a fool of yourself. If only I was a little smarter 12 years ago I would've saved myself a lot of grief.

Anyway, the real point of the story is to say that given enough time, rejection and utter humiliation means nothing. I was humiliated many times in my life, and look at me now. I'm still happily blogging away and eating ice-cream and warbling Uninvited. Sure, those 2 incidents dented my self-esteem a bit, but at least I tried. Now I can even post this up in public for everyone to read, so it's great training for public speaking. I mean, once you know you've been rejected by a guy you like and the whole school knows about it, you've pretty much hit rock bottom and from that point onwards, nothing you do in public is going to be of much consequence anymore.

Impromptu presentation? No sweat la, what's the worse that can happen? I stumble over a few words and the class laughs. No biggie, at least there won't be any of those malicious whispers around. Tripping up in public? So my legs don't genuflect that well, big deal. More laughter, but at least it's not nasty laughter. Probably the only thing worse than rock bottom is if I propose to a guy and he rejects me in public. But then again what're the odds of that ever happening?

I've wondered why I keep doing all this weird impulsive things that I do, and last year I finally had the answer. My ex came back, and I didn't ask him something I most desperately wanted to know. To me, there's nothing worse than not knowing for sure. I'd rather have brutal honesty than being dangled along for, say 3 months, wondering and speculating all the time and generally just wearing my nerves down to a frazzle. It's just not worth the trouble.

I suppose what someone decides to do ultimately depends on the scale which you rate things. I always ask myself 1 question when I'm in doubt. "Would I regret this when I'm 80 years old?" Once I put myself in that kind of time frame nothing really matters anymore, so I just go ahead and do what I want to do.

Remind me to tell you what happened in Nagisa Restaurant in Sunway Resort sometime later. It appears I still haven't grown out of this humiliating myself phase yet.

*clickity click