Yep... despite probably worrying a bit too much over it this week, the dance last night actually turned out REALLY well. Did I have a date? Nope! Of course not. I had been hoping somebody would come out of nowhere and ask me during the week leading up to it (since they actually encouraged the girls to ask guys to the dance this time), but it never happened so I just went alone. Well... I didn't end up being completely alone, since there actually were a decent number of people who went without dates (though, at first, it seemed that the only people there were a bunch of engaged/married couples and the group of friends that I hung around with for most of the night. Around 6 or 7 of us, plus 6 or 7 couples, most of them engaged. That was weird.)
But yeah... although nobody asked me (I have had a few suspicions of people who might have been the most likely to ask in an alternate universe where someone had... but I don't know if any of those suspicions are remotely accurate), I definitely did not have trouble finding people to dance with. The "nobody but engaged/married couples" thing changed before too long and more people showed up, some of them without dates. I actually kind of had the opposite problem, for the first time ever: even though they seemed to be playing more slow songs than usual for an SVU dance, there were actually more people there that I would've liked to dance with than there were songs that I could have actually danced to! Several left before I had a chance to dance with them, and one was responsible for watching the front table so she couldn't actually go in and dance (though I did at least manage to ask.)
I think this is actually the first "regular" SVU dance where I actually had people to dance with pretty frequently and didn't even have problems asking anyone to dance. Usually, it's only the live band ones (where it's easier to do ballroom-type dancing) where I manage to have people to dance with pretty consistently; the regular ones have too much "random wiggle dancing" and it's usually really hard to track down people I'd like to dance with at a moment's notice when a slow song first comes on. I think the fact that it was in the ballroom and also was a bit less crowded than usual helped--I could usually see across the room well enough that I could point out people I knew from a distance and go toward them as soon as a song started, in the cases where I wasn't already standing there talking to them before the song started up. It was kind of weird how easy it was for me to actually ask people this time--usually it's really nerve-wracking for me, but this time it wasn't hard at all, not even the first time I tried. Of course... I think it helped that someone asked ME to dance before I ever tried to ask anyone to dance. I'm not sure what it is, but for some reason it becomes a lot easier to ask people to dance once I've been asked by someone first. And that effect applies to other people too, not just the same person who asked me, so it's not even just an "oh hey, someone asked me to dance once so she'd probably be okay with dancing again" sort of thing.
I actually kind of amazed myself a few times. Not just with the fact that I was able to ask people right as a song started, sometimes without even having been hanging around talking to them beforehand (though that's always pretty amazing too, when it happens--the "3 seconds to find someone to dance with" thing doesn't tend to work well for me), but with who I was able to ask in a few cases. I ended up dancing with two girls that I didn't know all that well prior to the dance (one of which I had only really talked to once before), and also asked someone who I had a crush on waaaay back in my first year (...and a half) at SVU, which is the sort of thing that can be a little awkward sometimes. Especially since those feelings never got brought up with the person I had them for (...though looking back at several situations from my first semester or so, I was being pretty obvious about it a lot of the time, so I'd assume she probably figured it out at some point I guess?), so rather than a clear "no" that whole situation is still in "what if?" territory. There was a brief moment last night where I wondered if I might've accidentally revived at least a tiny bit of that crush, or that it wasn't quite as dead as I thought it was before (just sleeping), but... I guess it's too soon to say. So far I'll just assume it was more of a "hey, I used to hang around with this person more often and actually liked her!" sort of thing and the "crush may be starting to return" thing was just from memories of the first time coming up to the surface or something. So... "still dead, but with little ghosties floating around occasionally reminding me that something used to be there" I guess.
Also ended up dancing with the girl who I suspect might have been the one someone was telling me about at one of the dances last year (the mysterious "girl who was at this dance who apparently liked me" that I've mentioned several times on here... I assume she'd probably have lost interest by now since that was waaaaay back at the end of fall semester 2012, but I'd still like to find out who she was at some point... I hate leaving questions unanswered and having these dangling "what if?" sorts of things floating around my head for years afterward)... no way to confirm or deny those suspicions as far as I can tell ("did you like me a year-and-a-half ago?" would just be way too awkward of a question to even ask), but I figure that if by some freak chance she actually is the one who likes (liked?) me, asking her to dance can only be a good thing for both of us. XD
(...plus I'm fairly sure I could end up liking her if we saw each other more often and got to know each other better. and it'd be really nice to actually find someone who likes me for once, rather than constantly having these horrible one-sided crushes on so many people who will never actually feel anything for me. I'm guessing I would have much easier time growing to like someone--and would be much more comfortable with bringing it up once I did--if I found out she liked me first. So if you're reading this and you suspect you may be the person I'm talking about here, let me know!)
The weekend aside from the dance also turned out well. I managed to randomly bump into a group of friends (the same ones I hung out with most of the time at the dance, actually) three days in a row and ended up actually having stuff to do and people to talk to, not just sitting around alone in my apartment all day. On Friday there was an Easter activity at the Institute building, which turned out fairly well (despite not being able to do all of the activities--one triggered a bit of a crowd freakout, one was just awkward, and one I just never got around to.) After that I went to an SVU orchestra concert, which also turned out pretty well. Saturday I didn't have anything in particular to do (before the dance) but ended up wandering on campus and bumped into some friends again, which led to me tagging along for a bit as they went to the Amish Cupboard, the dollar store, and also the last women's lacrosse game of the year. I had kinda been wanting to go to one of those at some point, mainly because I actually know several people on the team, but I wasn't able to get a chance before this past Saturday because I'm not really a sports person and that's the sort of thing I'd need to have friends to sit with at or things wouldn't go well (either due to crowd freakout or just a bit of boredom and loneliness... which tend to make me more vulnerable to crowd freakouts, so it'd probably end up being a little of both if I tried to go by myself.) But yeah, since I had friends to sit with and talk to and goof off with, things went pretty well and I ended up staying to the end (...though we didn't get there until right before halftime. XD) Later on Saturday was, of course, the dance which I already went into a lot of detail about. Though I did forget to mention one thing--I actually ended up hanging around and talking to some people after the dance for quite a while (dance ended at 11:30... I didn't start heading back down the hill until something like 1:30.) That's definitely something I've missed from my earlier semesters here--just having random conversations with people that end up going on for hours late into the night and only ending when somebody needs to go to bed. XD
Sunday even turned out well, which is something that doesn't happen too often. I had to get up a bit early (which I'm kind of surprised I was able to do, considering that I didn't get home until almost 2 am and stayed up almost another hour before finally going to bed) because a friend had invited me to her church meeting so that I could watch her (and her brother, I think?) sing. Apparently the Mormons have several musical performances from members on Easter Sunday, or at least they did this time, and hers was one of them (and as it turned out, two other friends were there playing the piano during her performance also.) This was one of the 9 am sessions of Mormon church, but thankfully the meeting I was invited to didn't start until 10:50ish so it wasn't completely impossible for me to get up in time. I actually ended up getting there a bit early--there was basically no one there at 10:30ish when I first got up to the church building! Despite the initial lack of people to sit with, things turned out well; another friend had apparently decided ahead of time to sit with me so that I could avoid crowd-freakouts, so I waited for her to show up rather than spending all of my time glancing around the room desperately searching for somewhere I could sit. There were a few others I knew there, so I probably *could* have had somewhere to sit if she hadn't shown up... but it's always nice to be able to skip the "awkwardly looking around for a seat" stage and just be able to say "oh, I'm sitting with this person! that will work. no need to worry about seating arrangements now," so if you're reading this... you being the "designated crowd-freakout preventer" this past Sunday was definitely appreciated! XD
And randomly, I also got to find out what the Mormons do when there are people who need gluten-free food, rather than just making them eat the hunks of bread that everyone else gets during sacrament meeting. Apparently they put out this tiny little cup of... some sort of crunchy thin bread/cracker-type things, alongside the usual pile of torn-up bread chunks. That's actually not something I've ever really thought about before (the "what about people who can't have that bread?" issue), but it makes sense considering I've met several people who are definitely gluten-intolerant or suspect that they might have some degree of gluten intolerance.
Sunday didn't even turn out to be a "sit around alone" day after that point, surprisingly. I went to Subway, went for a nice walk, and then around 7:00 I ended up going to the fireside up at the Mormon church just to have something to do. Spent most of that drawing and watching someone's baby running around and doing silly things, though I paid some attention to the speakers also. Wasn't too "churchy" in this case, surprisingly enough, which is probably why I actually ended up paying some attention to the speakers--more of general "advice for doing well in life" sorts of things from what I can remember, and talking about the first two expeditions to the South Pole and comparing how they went (one guy made it there and back, the other's entire group ended up dead 11 miles from their base camp.) Also ended up sitting with and talking to a new person who I had only seen a few times before. And after that, I ended up wandering up to the lofts where I stumbled across the same group of friends that I had repeatedly bumped into throughout the weekend, this time dyeing Easter eggs in the lobby. I ended up decorating one of the eggs (put two random chicken stickers on it and drew some squiggles and lines and random grass) but mostly just talking and goofing off. Which continued for several hours--it wasn't until 11:00ish that I finally ended up going back home again. It's nice that I've been able to get to know some of these people a bit better over the past week or two, though it really sucks that most of them are going to disappear (going away on missions) after this semester's over. It really kind of makes me wish that the later half of February as it was had never happened (or at least, that the crush I had on someone back in February had never happened... or if I had managed to bring it up with her earlier and get a clear "no" early on rather than being unable to say anything and thus unable to give up until the feelings went away) and that it had been more like these past few days/weeks instead. It's kind of funny (but also kind of sad) that I only just recently exchanged phone numbers with several of my "met this year" friends, and then they're all going to be gone in the next couple weeks (...which I also didn't know until very recently. I knew two of them had planned on going on missions after this year, but I had no idea the rest of them were all going to disappear too!) Hopefully I'll see them a good bit during the next couple weeks that are left of the semester so even if I never get to see any of them again, at least things will end on a good note rather than it being an "aw crap, I never even got to say goodbye to these people" sort of thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment