Having a crush on someone when you're completely falling apart

Hi,

I've made posts here before about various failed relationships I have had. 

Over the past few weeks, I have tried to be honest with myself and try to understand what I (rather than the masked me) is truly like. And what I want in a girlfriend. 

In this context of unmasking, I abruptly met a girl at my summer job. She was extremely pretty and seemed to take a liking to me. Unfortunately, seen from one angle, she is similar to someone who nearly killed me last year, and I watched in horror as my own mind filled with terror and went completely haywire. I tried to leave so she wouldn't notice and got as far as my doorstep before the panic attack hit me, and I wasn't able to contain it. 

Over the next days, I became horrified with my reaction. Though she didn't notice, I thought she did and wanted to apologise. I did tell some people about why I ran off like that, I made them promise and swear that she would never find out about it, and kept saying she didn't do anything wrong and I wanted to apologise. 

Unfortunately, the next time I saw her, it caught me at a bad time because I was in the process of having my brain smashed to pieces by the extreme heat (it was early August). So I immediately shut down and began talking to myself from anxiety. I caught her looking my way quite a lot. I think it took me by surprise at this moment that I found her not only scary, but extremely kind and extremely pretty. 

We worked together for a few hours- and I became virtually unresponsive when we began. Instead of getting upset or withdrawing, all she did was make brief, encouraging comments to me. She like last time sat with me when I was eating (and this time I enjoyed it) and then I became absorbed in my project before the break finished. We were working together again, and I closed my eyes in an attempt to calm down. 

To my surprise, when I opened them, she was standing right next to me and tried to talk to me. I really enjoyed talking to her- she somehow saw I was wearing Alpine earplugs, or what I was writing and asked a lot of really positive things. To my questions she shared quite an impressive amount of personal information and as she did so I was transfixed by how beautiful her big brown eyes were. I was trying not to stare, but the second time she made eye contact, she held it and didn't look away until it became too much for me. 

I later found her doing something else and apologised for being clueless saying I was autistic. To my shock, she apologised for making me feel clueless and I told her I usually struggled with eye contact in an attempt to apologise for the shutdown. She was really warm and I really enjoyed the interaction. 

I went home and began crying because of how much telling her I was autistic terrified me, and also because of how nice she was. I was an absolute zombie that evening- my face must have been as white as Greenland snow!

Two days later, I had a terrible meltdown- I was overthinking our interaction and blaming myself, and then read a triggering scene from a book, began crying uncontrollably and blaming myself for hurting her. 

Ultimately, it emerged that she was really worried about me that day and felt I was "upset", and I asked her friend to pass on an apology because of how bad I felt. 

Ever since then, I was burnt out, crying a lot (as if I don't already), constantly overstimulated (first aid course) and gradually admitted some things about her to myself. How fond I was of her cascading curls, or her beautiful eyes (if I find a young woman beautiful, I will automatically feel her eyes are her most beautiful physical aspect).

Yesterday I admitted to myself that I wanted to kiss her, and I have never wanted to kiss someone as much as her.

To illustrate how unprecedented such a thought is for me, I won't say I never said that. I'll just say that it took me over a month to admit to myself that our shift manager is "hot", and even then she has absolutely nothing on this beautiful, mysterious, kind girl I now really want to connect with in some form, even if just to be friends (I don't have a lot of these). 

I wanted to see her again when our availability overlaps and I wanted to ask for her phone number. 

Sometimes I feel things like "She is a very strange being if she didn't get angry at me"

Sometimes I want to trace my fingers through her hair. 

I really hope these thoughts aren't inappropriate- I did dream of a kiss from her once at night, but it wasn't more explicit than that (ever) and if these thoughts are not appropriate and I'm some sort of creep, I hope it's in a 'safe' way?

Parents
  • I don't have much help to give here OP but I can certainly relate and I hope you can remain close to them. What you've written inappropriate at all. She sounds really kind, I hope you're not like me and get so caught up worrying what to do/say you don't end up doing anything though.

    I will say though in my teens whenever I crushed on someone I'd also be having a breakdown/rough patch, or I'd be in a rough patch and crushing on someone, usually very parasocially too (i.e. crushing on people already taken/out my league)

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  • I don't have much help to give here OP but I can certainly relate and I hope you can remain close to them. What you've written inappropriate at all. She sounds really kind, I hope you're not like me and get so caught up worrying what to do/say you don't end up doing anything though.

    I will say though in my teens whenever I crushed on someone I'd also be having a breakdown/rough patch, or I'd be in a rough patch and crushing on someone, usually very parasocially too (i.e. crushing on people already taken/out my league)

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