I always found that fantasizing about the different routes my life could take was easier than taking certain actions to make those possibilities come true. In high school, this made me very quiet,  especially with people whom I liked, and wished to be closer to. In my second year, there was a girl named Farah in my religious studies class. Unlike me, she was in the International Baccalaureate program, which meant we would not be in many classes together throughout high school, and we were in completely different social circles. I didn’t think there was much I could do to get her attention, but that didn’t stop me from pining silently at a distance. It was a stupid, temporary crush until it persisted after one year, then two. We would speak sometimes on a technicality, maybe to ask a question about homework, and even at these opportunities I wouldn’t say more than a few words. How could I, when I’d made this girl larger than life in my mind? When I’d enlarged the idea of us, and how exactly we’d fit together in another life, and what intimate things we’d share — how could I make small talk with that same person? 

 

When I entered cegep, I thought I was done being passive. I was ready to experience something, with the personality I had at the current time, not an idealized version of myself I had made up in my mind. I saw the same boy in a few of my classes, and based on the few interactions we had, I was sure he liked me. But that knowledge came with a new kind of pressure, a pressure that made me stumble over my words and avoid approaching him, a pressure that made me retreat again, without even knowing. I still had hope, that it would take us more time, but the more it dragged, the more I saw another girl come into the picture. He hadn’t waited. Maybe he hadn’t even known about what I conjured up in my head.  

 

In university, I had come to terms mostly with how my insecurity had gotten in the way of any potential relationship, or friendship, I could have had. So, in my creative fiction class,  I decided to write about it. I produced the most vulnerable version of myself on the page. I hypothesized a realistic situation with Farah, where it would have been so easy, almost obligatory, to talk to her, and I still don’t. In a class of people I hadn’t met before, I didn’t expect anyone to realize who the main character was, so I wasn’t so bothered when they didn’t understand her. “But I don’t get why she doesn’t comfort Farah, maybe she’s really shy…?”, a classmate trailed off awkwardly during my workshop. Then, towards the end, the teacher asks if this work was based on real events. I was stunned. “Well the— the events aren’t real but…” I said, as I saw the teacher waiting impatiently, so I stammered abruptly with “yeah, this is roughly based on memories I had from high school… yeah,” I finished with an uncomfortable grimace. Even then, when I had the chance to explain everything I was keeping in, I didn’t take it.  

 

Thinking about these instances now, apart from feeling slightly embarrassed, I do laugh. Even though it’s taken me a long time to build the confidence I have now, and even though there’s a lot more to be improved, I know that the greatest value can only be made in real-life interactions, even if I’m imperfect in them. Nothing, in the long term, is worse than being silent.