I was in love with this girl I knew from uni. We hung out all the time and we very really close. Well, not to the point of kissing (that reminds me, I’ve never even kissed anyone, sigh), but we were getting there. Then when I wanted to make our relationship official, she turned me down, saying that it would never work out since her parents wouldn’t approve of me (with me not being in the same religion as her). And that broke my heart, so I decided to just focus on my career and hobbies for the next few years.

After some time, I had a mad crush on a new starter at work. She was super cute, and had so much in common, like enjoying spicy food, gaming and karaoke. Every time we hung out, we had a blast. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend at the time so I couldn’t make a move. But eventually she broke up and was single. I thought I’d try my luck after giving her some time to come to terms and settle down. Meanwhile, she started hooking up with randoms on Tinder and stuff, and even with one of my colleagues (which I only suspected at the time but didn’t confirm until later), but it was all causal, so I didn’t pay it much heed. I was waiting for the right opportunity to ask her out, but the thing is I never got a chance to spend some quality alone time with her - every time we hung out, it was always as a group, with friends, so we never really got to know each other that well. So I’d try and come up with excuses such as trying to have lunch with her, but somehow it never worked out (like she’d say she either bought her own lunch or something, also I didn’t want to make it obvious that I was interested in her). So in my efforts to try and get more opportunities to talk to her, I’d deliberately adjust my work schedule, like staying late, or starting early. But then I saw myself slowly enter into dangerous territory, like I’d keep tabs on her timings, work/home routes, I’d keep “accidentally” bumping into her etc, and one day, I suddenly realized that I was turning into a stalker - and it horrified me. I was afraid of what I’d become. This person, this wasn’t me at all. It frightened me. So I decided to take a break from her and stay away from her as much as possible, even changing my schedule so that I’d avoid running into her. But as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder - unfortunately I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. My ears would perk up like a dog, every time I heard her distinct laugh, or her voice from across the office. I’d have regular dreams about her. I couldn’t stop thinking about her constantly, it was driving me insane. But I kept those feelings bottled up inside me, and somehow managed to truck along, hoping that these feelings would eventually die. I dunno how I managed to survive like this for a few years. I was wondering if I’d ever get over her. Eventually though, she decided to move on to a different company, and that gave me a lot of bitter-sweet mixed emotions. On one hand, I was happy that she was going away and I could finally get over her, on the other hand, I was sad that I may not be seeing much of her again. But I was still glad that it was over. We planned a farewell, and decided to head out for drinks and stuff after work. I thought of giving her a present, and bought this super expensive jade pendant. In hindsight, that was a totally inappropriate gift given that we weren’t really that close, but this foolish heart of mine was blind at the time. Coming back to the outing, we were all having a good time, and I was looking for an opportunity to give her the present, since it was obviously not very appropriate and I didn’t want to embarrass us in front of the others. So I decided to wait until everyone was leaving, and I thought I’d offer to walk her home and give her the pendant then. Unfortunately things didn’t quite end up as I’d imagined, there was another ex-colleague of mine who came with us, and much to my annoyance, he was getting a bit chummy with my crush. And then, all off a sudden, they made out. I was just standing there whilst she played tongue-hockey with him, completely ignoring me. And that shattered my heart. I was broken. I immediately turned around and walked away, whilst they were still making out in the background. With the ex-colleague, who barely spent much time with her, who didn’t even know her as well as I did. I immediately went into a strip club to take my mind off things, and ended up giving away my expensive pendant to a random stripper, and drowned my sorrows in boobies and alcohol.

I still couldn’t forget her though. No other woman compared to her in my eyes, and in spite of everything that happened, I’d still find myself occasionally thinking or dreaming about her. But I eventually got over it after a couple of years, after I completely stopped all forms of contact with her. That brings us to the present. Now that I’m over her, I wanted to get back into the dating scene. Set up profiles on Bumble and Hinge, had some good chats, but all of them ended up eventually going nowhere and wasting my time. I disabled my profiles, went into depression. I also quit my job, because I was having a mid-life career crisis (unrelated to my relationship woes). I’ve now been jobless for 6 months and slowly running out of savings, unsure of what to do with my life, thinking about where it all went wrong.

And that’s my story.