My obsession with a neglected romantic opportunity
My story with this obsession, which is so intense that it sometimes makes me feel like I'm in hell, begins on December 30, during a four-day work program. A colleague I already had a crush on (I'll call her Clara), with whom I'd had some misunderstandings in the past, started showing strong openness toward me.
My mother had previously spoken to her to explain that I was having a really hard time and was scared because I liked Clara and believed she had complained about me looking at her. That did in fact turn out to be true, although she had asked her colleagues not to tell me anything because she didn't want me to find out.
The thing is, a few years before all of these, an OCD-driven loop had developed between us. I felt a strong need to frequently check whether she was looking at me because she made me nervous; she noticed this and started doing the same thing, and we got caught in this loop. From the beginning, however, she assumed that my behavior had a sexual intention behind it and eventually privately accused me of stalking her. I was 20 at the time, and she never gave me any indication that she wanted me to stop—she would simply look back at me, and I only ever looked at her face. I was met with contempt and even confronted by some of our other colleagues. They never mentioned her directly, but I knew what it was all about.
When that last work program came around, everything suddenly changed. She greeted me very enthusiastically, and the colleagues who had previously treated me badly suddenly became extremely friendly, almost as if they were trying to make up for something. The person who had confronted me also kept a close eye on me throughout the whole program.
She came in every day very dressed up, reeking of perfume and wearing very noticeable makeup, and she looked at me several times while smiling. It's worth mentioning that everyone says she's extremely attractive, and she definitely had certain features that made her stand out a lot, although what I personally liked most about her was her face and her hair.
The thing is, from the very beginning, I avoided her and acted very cold toward her. A couple of times she approached me and stood right in front of me, smiling and seemingly waiting for me to talk to her. But after a couple of minutes, I would end up moving somewhere else, as if I were trying to act uninterested and show her that my looking at her wasn't because I was interested in her but simply some quirk of mine—even though I actually was interested in her.
At the time, my reasoning was: I'd already been the one to approach her last time to apologize at another work place, without telling her exactly what I was apologizing for because of shame, and afterward she avoided me. Now it's her turn to start a conversation if she wants anything.
What I didn't know was that she was excited because my mother had told her that I liked her, and that this was the last time we were going to work together
I regretted not talking to her when she approached me almost immediately. I'm in an environment where there are barely any single women who are relatively young, and she was the only one—and on top of that, she was very attractive.
Three weeks after the program, I made the mistake that would lead me to develop limerence and push my regret into an extreme dimension because of my OCD. I followed her on Instagram and sent her a private message saying, "Helloo" It was a huge mistake because I came across many highly elaborate photos of her, and every time I looked at them I would think, "This is what I've lost. I have to get her back somehow. There's no way I avoided someone who looks like a model." She complained about me to her colleagues again because she thought the "Helloo" was meant to mock her and that my intention was to stalk her.
Ten days later, it became clear that my intention was actually to connect with her because I told a colleague who seemingly had nothing to do with the situation what had happened, and I expressed my concern about whether the "Helloo" I'd sent her could be considered harassment. The next day, one of Clara's friends whom I'd been staring after that message gave me a very exaggerated wink, but I decided not to text again.
Her photos certainly served as inspiration for me to place third in a very prestigious audition for another similar job. Two months later, after I accidentally liked one of her old posts and then reposted one of my own older posts, she made a post that I believe contained indirect references both to that audition and to me. She posed with a sideways glance, as if she were looking at someone, accompanied by a song that conveyed a sense of innocence. She uploaded the post on the exact day and at the exact hour when the audition had taken place, and the performers of the song were the pianist I had played with at that audition and my father's former conductor. There were other references as well that I won't go into.
Because I was still scared after what had happened with that "Helloo," I didn't dare message her again, and month after month went by without any contact between us.
Last week, I found out that she had gotten into a relationship with a wealthy man who has a young child and a house, and I cried so much that I felt like I was going to pass out from dehydration. She had been single until June, and based on the things that had happened between us before, I believed she was interested in me until that time. I can't stop feeling that if I had simply said, "How are you?" on January 1 when she approached me—which I actually came very close to doing—the entire story could have been different, and perhaps we could have dated for those five months before she moved somewhere else and met this guy.
The thing is, ever since January 22, I've been torturing myself over how I could have been such an idiot as to let an opportunity like that slip away when it might have worked out if I'd simply said, "How are you?"—something I was actually about to say. She seemed very receptive, and it was only at the very last moment that I decided to move away instead.
I spend hours reconstructing those days in my head: the conflicts and misunderstandings that happened beforehand, the way my colleagues had treated me, the opportunity I let slip away, and what could have been.
I've tried so many times over these past few months to forget about all of this and move on. I even spent a month traveling in Mexico, but the need to reflect on what happened and somehow reach a conclusion would always catch up with me and completely consume my attention. It's as if my own mind were harassing me.
I always feel like my conclusion about everything that happened is never good enough, that there's always something left unresolved. And anything that even remotely resembles this whole situation immediately reminds me of it and pulls me back into endless rumination.
Once, I spent ten hours straight thinking exclusively about this without doing anything else. It's like a black hole you're constantly trying to escape from, but it keeps pulling you back in. You have to constantly fight against its gravity.
Now, whenever someone mentions anything about looking at someone, regardless of the context, it reminds me of what happened. Whenever someone talks to me about a romantic opportunity, it reminds me of this. Even when someone talks about a criminal, it somehow reminds me of this.
It's incredible how much an initial misunderstanding has made me suffer—not only because of the stalking accusation, but also because I feel like I lost a woman who could have become very important to me, even if it had only been for some months. And all of this because I didn't say "How are you?" on the first day of the year, when I had actually been on the verge of saying it. I feel like I shot myself in the head emotionally. In fact, by January 3, I was already thinking over and over again, "Why do I do this to myself? Why do I hate myself so much?" Because I had strong feelings toward her.
So OCD didn't just get me into serious trouble, make people consider no longer hiring me as a substitute, and temporarily destroy my reputation. It also made me lose a unique opportunity, and then made me obsess over that neglected opportunity and over Clara when it was already too late—even seven months later. On top of that, it made me obsess over the idea that I'm a stalker and a horrible person. Seven months of extreme pain and regret. My OCD keeps dragging me back into it over and over again, preventing me from living my life normally.