Thursday, April 28, 2011

My 8-Bit Heart

“There once was a boy
who was made, not created
He wanted to learn
He wanted to indulge his senses,
to understand pain
But most of all,
He wanted to love
For only when he found true love
would he become real”
- Simon Curtis, Boy Robot

Wow, it's hard to believe it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. The days leading up to Easter break were significantly busier than even I had anticipated. And as a result, I never got round to many of the things that I'd been hoping to do.

The last time I blogged I was on the verge of asking my new friend - let's call him Beach Boy – out on a date. Well, I took the leap of faith and he said yes. So I took him for a picnic, followed by a concert at sunset. It was the perfect 1st date – or it was to me at least. Conversation came easy, and the afternoon just flew by. The concert allowed me the opportunity to sit close to him and have many a whispered conversation. Could it get any better than that?

We ended the evening by going for coffee, and by the time I took him home there was only one thing on my mind. Something that I had been itching to do the whole afternoon – kiss him. But how do you go about kissing the boy you like if you don't know if the feeling is mutual? Well, you do the gentlemanly thing – you ask whether it would be OK if you kissed him goodnight. And that's exactly what I did when Beach Boy leaned in to give me a hug goodnight.

To say that I was on cloud 9 at that point would be an understatement. I couldn't stop thinking about him that whole week. I had to see him again. So I asked him out to dinner and a movie that Friday night. We had another fun evening, and by the time the movie started I wanted to reach for his hand so badly. As fate would have it, we had a rowdy group of people sitting a couple of rows behind us, and I didn't want to risk making him feel awkward. I decided to rather wait till about halfway through the movie, but by then his hand was too far out of reach and I never got the opportunity I had been hoping for. And due to some unforeseen dental complications our goodnight kiss sadly wasn't to be repeated either.

By that point I was itching to ask Beach Boy to go steady with me. But was it too soon? Was I willing to risk jumping the shark as had been the case with Mr One-Four-Five? I must've gone over it in my head at least a million times. And when Beach Boy and I took a trip to the beach that Sunday, I still didn't have an answer.

Our time together at the beach went by much too fast – but then again so had every other afternoon/evening we had spent together. There was something about him. Something about the way I felt when I was around him. No other guy had ever made me feel like that before. It's that very feeling that convinced me to tell him how I felt once we got back to the car. I was so nervous – and I'm sure it must've shown. I think I fussed around with the car keys for at least 3 minutes before I finally opened my mouth. I don't think a single thing came out the way I had intended. Yet I probably said all I needed to.

Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to tell you that I finally got my happy ending. Alas, things with Beach Boy wasn't meant to be either. I should've gathered that it was still much too soon after his last relationship It wasn't that there couldn't potentially be something more than friendship – it was just that he wasn't quite ready for anything more at that point. I won't lie – I was disappointed. But then again I had pursued this with little to no expectations, which made it somewhat easier to digest. The points he raised were all valid – and if there's one thing I value above all else, it's honesty. I'd rather suffer from momentary disappointment than major heartbreak a couple of months down the line.

Thankfully my confession hasn't caused any awkwardness between Beach Boy and I. We continue to chat regularly, and we've been out for coffee and a movie as has become our little custom. I told Beach Boy that I hoped he would give me a chance once he's reached that good place (let's call it inner peace, for a lack of better words) he's striving for. So who knows? Maybe he will. Maybe he won't.

For now I find comfort in the knowledge that I've made a new friend – a tangible one – and that my confidence is boosted with every leap of faith I take. When all is said and done, I'm still the boy who wants nothing more than to believe in love. For what could be more simple than to love and be loved in return?

It's this childlike belief that keeps my 8-bit heart beating.