Since 9 August 2018, I had been in love with SG, a girl in my university. I was placed in the same group with her for my 5th year. There were two guys, GE and LS, whom I considered to be my competitors. For the first few months, I had been trying to chase SG. I kept portraying the best of myself to her and I treated her as best as I could.
Meanwhile, my 5th year group mates kept supporting GE, who seemed to be better than me in many aspects. I was very jealous of GE. But in December 2018, an incident happened where GE had a fall out with SG. It was a culmination of the negative aspects of his personality. Since then, he was essentially out of the competition and I was delighted about that.
However, there was still LS. Despite not getting a lot of support from my 5th year group mates, he seemed even stronger than GE. It definitely wouldn't be easy for me to defeat him. In January 2019, I was busy with an exam. Immediately after that, it was the Chinese New Year. During that period of time, I was unable to make any significant progress in chasing SG and I felt left behind.
On 11 February 2019, I finally could do some much needed catch-up. Coincidentally, I found out on that day that LS actually had some flaws which greatly diminished his chance of chasing SG. I was so happy, thinking that with both my competitors out of the way, victory would be easy for me. My plan was to continue making good progress and then confess to SG when the conditions are ripe.
Unfortunately, the happiness was short-lived. Just a day later on 12 February 2019, a lecturer, UP, appeared and he unexpectedly became my new competitor. He was much stronger than GE and LS. Worse still, within hours of UP's appearance, he had gotten the support of my 5th year group mates. They kept matchmaking UP and SG, overshadowing me and hindering my progress. Actually, it was against professional conduct for UP as a lecturer to chase SG.
On 18 February 2019, my 5th year group mates openly supported UP by creating a great opportunity for him, and they went overboard. I tried to stop that, but I was unable to because I lacked influence in my group. UP was clearly getting the upper hand, and I felt very jealous and threatened. I was extremely upset about what my 5th year group mates did, more so when they had been my friends for years.
I realised that I had to make a move now before it's too late. It was actually rather premature to make the move at that point, and I knew that my chance of success was low, but I had no choice. On 25 February 2019, I mustered my courage and made the move by giving SG a box of chocolate. As it turned out, she accepted the chocolate happily. I was overjoyed, especially when I didn't really expect I would succeed. I even started planning my next steps.
However, on the next day 26 February 2019, weird things started happening. SG didn't want to talk to me much and she refused to follow me in my car even though we had been carpooling all the while. Those were signs that I might have been rejected by her. I kept telling myself that there had to be some alternative explanation for those things, but I knew in my heart that the situation had become very critical.
Then, I got the definite answer on 27 February 2019. SG returned the box of chocolate to me. At that point, her rejection had been confirmed and all hopes were lost. I was devastated. What made me feel really sad was the manner in which the rejection was revealed. Just as I thought I had succeeded, failure came suddenly and unexpectedly. Worse still, it seemed that I could no longer be friends with SG again moving forward.
After knowing about the rejection, my 5th year group mates didn't offer me much support, instead they downplayed my feelings and focused more on talking about my flaws. They were also unapologetic about their actions of supporting UP, insisting that he deserves an equal chance to chase SG, despite the fact that he had violated professional conduct for that. That made me realise they were fake friends of mine.
I really hoped that I could get back to being friends with SG. The situation was improving as time went on. However, I then made a mistake on 12 March 2019. It was caused by a lapse of judgement on my part, but I didn't have any bad intentions. Nevertheless, a huge crisis ensued where SG was really upset with me. To make matters worse, my 5th year group mates exaggerated my mistake and made a one-sided judgement about me.
On 1 April 2019, the crisis got resolved after a lucky turn of events. I was very glad about that, but unfortunately, it didn't have any long term significance. Things never returned to normal, and I never had the chance to get close to SG again. Many of the students in my batch knew the incident and they blamed it all on me. Right after 5th year ended, SG cut off all contact with me. On the other hand, GE truly got the forgiveness from SG for his past mistakes.
The whole incident ruined most of my memories in 5th year. It affected my studies, which resulted in me failing my 5th year and having to repeat the year. Several months later in September 2019, I finally accepted the truth that there is no way I could ever be successful in chasing SG and I decided to stop being friends with my 5th year group mates completely. I fully moved on from everything that had happened, while remembering all the lessons learnt.
Read the full story here:
