Anxiety (verbal diarrhea)

I've been struggling to come up with a suitable name for this post.
A post of which is going to be a back-to-basics post, more in line with the spirit of the blog at the start - that's right, I'm going to talk about my feelings.
I probably have teased it a little too much, but I'm going to keep all this stuff behind the "Read full post" link so if you wanted me to say something about video games or something on TV, then come back next week (although I haven't been posted enough to guarantee there will be something then, but you get the idea...)
Yeah, I want to talk about a few things which I'm quite sensitive about and this is why I decided on "anxiety" as a title. I was going to write this last week but often I'd rather watch TV or go to bed early and read Game of Thrones books but this stuff needs to be discussed, it's a problem that literally lives inside your head.

The subject I specifically get sensitive about is dating. Pretty much every time I see my good friend Wilson he asks if there's anyone I'm interested in, to which I get uncomfortable and explain that I don't really meet anyone so no - and then I feel sad. Possibly even worse is when my family joke about all the girlfriends I'm keeping secret from them, again to which I reply there isn't anyone, I don't get to meet people and then I feel sad. I will also get sad when people think I'm gay, and then I get stuck in a downward spiral where I replay my actions around said people and over-analyse and fret, what was I doing/saying that made them them think I was gay? - but that might be a post for a different day.
So I have dabbled in some of the online dating sites. I am always very reluctant to part with my money to unlock all the site's features - sending messages to other users, seeing photos etc, so I guess that makes me a window shopper (which I believe is the technical term).

Sometimes I feel the urge to have a look on these dating sites and think about saying hi to some of the ladies on there. Strangely enough I will take a look and rule myself out immediately, thinking to myself, "oh well they're too attractive, why would they be interested in me?". That's a failure right there. I can't remember the exact words from the A Song of Fire and Ice books (read: A Game of Thrones) but Arya's dancing teacher tells her something like "fear is the enemy of the mind" (ed: "fear cuts deeper than swords" is the phrase from the book) or words to that effect. I guess, that's all Anxiety is really, it is all in my head and it's not really real. I have recently downloaded a ebook about combating anxiety which I'll have to stick on my Kindle and read sometime. That being said, I can only read fiction in bed before I sleep. I've read self-help books in the past and my brain is still whirring when I put the book down and then it's hard to get to sleep.

I sent out the expected introductory message; "how are you? I like your profile" blah blah to a couple of girls I liked and amazingly she responded - I guess everyone just wants to be noticed and get recognition for their actions, or at least that's a mantra I hold when trying to understand people's actions. Yeah, so we send a few messages back and forth but at this rate it would take several weeks to have a 10min conversation so I threw it out there about meeting for a drink - nothing crazy. Quite a few personals I read say they would be interested in a surprise or something original for a first date, but I doubt they would actually want to go skydiving or paintballing or zorbing etc. No, it may appear uninspired but really the act of sitting opposite another (perhaps with a drink) and zoning out the rest of the world is really the way to go.

There's always the thought that even though you've arranged a time and place together they may just bail or that classic where they get a look at you and then decide not to show up. Fortunately she did indeed show up, my punctual self meant I was a few minutes early to the agreed meeting place of outside the Spoons named The Penny Black in Kidderminster - Kidderminster deemed an equidistant location between me in Bridgnorth and her living near Worcester.
I'm not sure why I was so nervous, after all I'm just meeting another person who probably is just as nervous, and it turns out she is a big nerd so it's not like we wouldn't have stuff to talk about, hopefully she didn't notice my hand shaking when I paid for the drinks.
After that I calmed down and believe it went well, we talked about nerdy stuff, board games, tv shows, video games etc and after that she said she had a good time and would like to do it again sometime.
Great I thought, I had a good time too but was she just being polite?. I think back to the Friends episode where Chandler can't break up with Rachel's boss where he ends every date with "Well I had a great time. I'll give you a call, we should do it again sometime".
I remember a time when I was sorting out an extension to my loan with the bank (for reasons I will not go into here) and after sorting it all out, signing papers and all that, the woman I had been doing this with said something like "it was nice to meet you" and that literally stopped me in my tracks. Did she actually mean it? Or was she just being friendly and polite. Working in a customer facing environment I can appreciate that you must always appear friendly and polite so I'm leaning towards that rather than she had a genuinely positive experience helping me. I think it would be great to tell people what you really think and not be afraid to curse.

So following our short talk over a drink I asked her out again, this time to go watch a film, pretty standard stuff, but following that message I was worried that I might not get a response - I would be checking every couple of hours or so each evening for a couple of evenings untils he replied - brilliant! We had planned to go bowling the following Saturday but a couple of days before she messaged me to cancel that she couldn't make it - she was moving that weekend, she has a show later on and then she's off to China. Now I'm really hoping it isn't just a big list of excuses. She did say to pick up things in November but I went to anxiety overload. Perhaps she took a moment to reassess and had second thoughts and decided it was best to quit while she was ahead. Honestly I think I would much prefer a genuine sincere rejection rather than some bullshit lines to put things off until so much time has passed that it's no longer a thing. I've never got why people feign interest and pretend they're having a good time

Again, it's all in my head and (hopefully) her reasons are genuine and we can indeed pick up things in November. To repeat myself it is all in my head but I'm worried that come November maybe nothing will come of all this. I sent a message with the usual "that's ok" and "enjoy your holiday" etc leaving the door open for her to get in touch. All the pretending that I could take it or leave it is bullshit but it's how best to act it seems. Right now I feel I have a lot in common with this girl, I think we could get on great and am really hopeful - basically I'm all in, to use a poker term, but you can't tell that to someone for fear of scaring them off. So if we do even meet up again, I'll have to be content saying "I had a good time" and "I like you/your company" for a little while longer.
The people that say "I need to get to know you more" are again being too polite to say I'm not interested or they're confused. My retort is if you don't know enough about me already to be interested then I'm the fool to think that I could convince you. This happened to me with Victoria, a very pretty cool girl that didn't seem immediately resistant to my charms and tolerated my company but she did say "I need to get you know you better" to which I should have got out then when I still could instead of getting hopelessly infatuated with her and then having my hopes dashed. It never would have worked out, she is/was very much into her poetry, spirituality, all that good hippy shit.

EDIT: I spoke with Jo, the girl from above, and the reasons she gave for postponing were legitimate and we finally got to go bowling together so it's all good. I think I will still post this here, reading it back and I like the stuff here but any future posts on the subject will be posted somewhere else (I wonder where that will be...)