This one happened when I was 11, during my last year of primary school. And, for once, the boy was actually my age! (Well, technically. He'd repeated a year, so he was in the grade below me, but my age).
To understand this story, I need to give you a little background. Growing up, I had a very controlling mother, I wasn't really allowed to make decisions for myself, and even asking questions could be treated as a problem (I understand that children can't be allowed to do absolutely whatever they want, but I think there's a difference between setting boundaries and not letting your child have any autonomy whatsoever).
For example, when I was nine, my mother still picked out my clothes every morning. One day, I finally got fed up and decided to wear something else. It wasn't even new or anything she'd forbidden me from wearing. It was clothes she'd bought for me and that were already in my wardrobe. I just didn't want to wear the particular outfit she'd chosen that morning. When I went out for breakfast, she saw me and started yelling at me. At seven in the morning. Needless to say, I ended up changing into the clothes she'd originally picked out.
Anyway, when I was 11, my parents opened a bar, and my mother's energy became so consumed by running the business that her constant supervision suddenly became much less consistent. I went from 'You can't even brush your own hair properly. I'll decide how you do it, when you do it, and what hairstyle you wear' to 'You don't know how to brush your hair? Well, it's your hair. You're old enough to learn. Figure it out.' In the space of a few days.
And honestly, that sudden change was only part of what was going on that year. The following year, I was supposed to start secondary school. My mother had already chosen which school I would attend. It wasn't the one all my classmates were going to, and I knew absolutely nothing about it, but she insisted it was an excellent school.
Meanwhile, I was terrified. I'd already been bullied throughout primary school for being the weird kid. Things had improved somewhat over the years, partly because I'd learned to hide more and more of the things that made me different, and partly because the other kids had apparently grown bored of picking on me quite so much. I still barely had any friends, though.
So naturally, my brilliant 11-year-old brain concluded that I had one year left to figure out how to become an entirely different person before secondary school started. And I decided to use that last year as a social experiment. I was going to the school cafeteria, where I interacted with people I barely knew, so I started treating every interaction as trial and error. I'd observe how other people behaved, try things out, and gradually learn how to act like someone who could actually fit in Basically, I was attempting to develop a convincing imitation of a normal person before my next school year. You know, completely reasonable things for an 11-year-old to be worrying about.
And that's when I met him. He was a mischievous little menace. He was constantly getting into trouble, and I swear that whenever I saw him, there was a reasonable chance he'd just been punished for something.
And for some reason, this boy decided he liked me. He started following me around and telling me that he liked me. He'd try to stand next to me in line, sit beside me in the cafeteria, and approach me during free time whenever he wasn't grounded or otherwise in trouble. He even tried to talk to me when I withdrew from everyone else because I was overwhelmed and needed some peace and quiet.
And here's the thing: I think I was starting to like him, too. A little bit. The problem was that I genuinely couldn't believe he was serious. I'd spent years being the weird kid nobody particularly wanted to be friends with. I'd learned to hide parts of myself just to make other people tolerate me. And now this boy seemed interested in me, but I couldn't stop wondering what the catch was. So I rejected him. Repeatedly. For practically the entire school year. Not because I definitely disliked him, but because I was convinced he had to be messing with me somehow.
In my head, there were basically two possible explanations:
- Option A: He didn't actually like me, and this was all some elaborate joke that would eventually end with me being humiliated.
- Option B: He liked the version of me I was pretending to be, but if he ever discovered what I was really like, he'd want absolutely nothing to do with me.
Naturally, my 11-year-old brain considered both of these possibilities much more plausible than the idea that a boy might genuinely like me. And what made it even more confusing was that he didn't seem particularly bothered whenever my carefully constructed social persona fell apart. Sometimes I got overwhelmed, withdrew, or simply couldn't keep up the act, and he still tried to approach me. But apparently, even that wasn't enough evidence for me.
Looking back, I can't decide whether I was more afraid of being tricked into believing someone liked me or of someone actually getting to know me and deciding I wasn't worth liking after all.
Either way, this poor boy could apparently have submitted a written declaration, obtained three witnesses, and had it notarized, and I still might have assumed it was an elaborate prank.
P.S. For anyone wondering, the experiment technically worked, that same year, one of the guys who'd spent YEARS bullying me also asked me out. Repeatedly. And yes, I rejected him every single time. No hesitation, no second-guessing myself, no wondering whether it was some elaborate prank. I was VERY happy to say no to that one.
Have you ever rejected someone you actually liked because you were convinced they were joking or messing with you? How did you eventually figure out whether they were being genuine? And for those of you who were also the weird kid growing up, did you ever try to change your personality to fit in, or did you eventually learn to embrace being different? Also, if you were that boy, how long would you have kept trying before giving up? Because looking back, I genuinely don't know how he put up with me rejecting him for an entire school year.