Sometimes, you can be very brave

My friend told me this once in a conversation about a woman with whom I'd been smitten for a some time. I had finally met back up with this woman after a few years and much back and forth, to find the attraction was still there, but that she was still committed to a relationship that, by her own admission, was going nowhere. I had told myself not to pursue things further; to wait and see if she called me back. It was the polite thing to do, I argued, the less pushy thing. It was when I mentioned this to my friend that she said it.

"Sometimes you can be very brave." Her point was, be brave now. There was nothing to lose in telling this woman how I felt. There was everything to gain in telling her that, if she felt the same, she should leave this nowhere relationship and be with me. If that was too pushy, so be it. Life gives you few second chances (I'd blown the first one years before) and you take them, or you live to regret it, and that's that.

So I told her what I wanted and it didn't work out that time. Later, I did get a third chance and, as chance would have it, I would have been better off leaving well enough alone. Some fantasies are best left as just that, but that's not the point of this story. The point is, that my friend was right.

There's someone who I've been thinking about for a long, long time; someone who is single and smiles at me in a way I've never seen her smile before and maybe that's nothing and maybe it isn't, but it's high time I took steps to find out. I've been biding my time, waiting for the perfect moment, deciding how to ask her without being too pushy, without making her uncomfortable. I've been, in short, chickening out.

It's hard sometimes to know when you are being patient and not too eager vs. too scared to ask for what you want, but after failing to ask her out today, because that perfect moment didn't arrive, I found myself driving home alone and very disappointed. And then my friend's words came into my head.

"Sometimes, you can be very brave."

She had said them over an instant message chat, but I heard them in my head in her own voice: clear and straightforward, but with warmth. She had meant it in the best possible way, but the corollary, while unspoken, was plain: Sometimes, I am not.

And that is what I was tonight: not brave. I can keep waiting for the right opportunity-- when not too many people are around, when she doesn't seem busy, when I have her attention and I can gauge her interest level as we speak-- but perfect moments are rare and I could be waiting for a long, long time, while someone else is brave enough to act. Instead, I can walk right up to her the next moment I see her and ask her out. She can say no, may even be more likely to say no than if I'd caught her at the right time, and I'll have to wonder if it could have worked out if I'd been more patient, but at least I'll have tried.

I can be very brave.