cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24986940

(“the McDonald’s girl” = girl 3. That phrase was the motorcycle boy’s idea. This story is not related to McDonald’s or motorcycles.)

Starting in January 2024, she occasionally caught my eye when I was in the one class we were both in. I mostly ignored her.

On February 29, when I was sitting down in class and the McDonald’s girl was walking in front of me and I probably looked at her for a moment, she appeared to pause and make eye contact with me, and I was very shocked. Later in the same class period, when she was sitting in front of me, she appeared to turn back and look at me. I felt like I knew that she almost certainly had some sort of interest in me, maybe a crush idk. I gradually started to think about how good her personality was (this was likely affected by a lot of bias) and have a crush on her. The beginning of the crush was between March 2^[1] and March 5^[2].

This is around the time when finding my future wife before graduation if she could be found was slowly becoming almost like a goal, instead of just a hypothetical possibility in the distant future. (Both of these mindsets are worse than the exploration goal.)

On March 2, me and most other seniors went on a field trip to Disneyland. Experiencing scary rides for fun might have influenced my mindset.

On March 3 and 4, in a group chat (including the motorcycle boy, but not the McDonald’s girl), I sent:

• “Last Thursday in religion class, [the McDonald’s girl] looked at me in an interesting way”
• “It seems to reveal interesting feelings”
• “Probably attraction, but could also be a feeling of impending doom” (2nd part is joke)

I did not ask “Does [the McDonald’s girl] have a boyfriend?” I did not reach that level of fearless communication yet. Eventually you will see that asking this would have made a difference.

I considered going to the table with the McDonald’s girl during lunch and asking to sit there. On March 6, while feeling uncertain that I would be able to do it and that we would have the same lunch period, I saw her but gave up and did not ask to sit there. On March 12 (the next day that we had the same lunch period), I cared more about having undelayed success in doing it, and while being completely calm, I did it, and I was welcomed to sit there. Praying for strength in a bathroom stall at the beginning of lunch might have had an effect. I did this 3 times in total. Also, the motorcycle boy (one of the people I previously sat with) told me in a text “they both asked me what I did to make you sit over there. They thought I pushed you away! 🤬”

On March 17, at night, I believed that I would probably ask about her looking at me and confess to her at lunch the next day. The next day, the feeling of certainty faded away, and I did not do it. But in the evening, I sent her the creative writing club project that I was working on, with “I’m trying to impress you” as the message. It took several minutes to have the courage to click the send button.

On March 19, when all students were walking from the church to the school, the motorcyle boy appeared and told me something like “Dullbananaaaaaaaaaas. So the McDonald’s girl was telling me… in case you forgot… she wanted me to remind you… in case you forgot… that the McDonald’s girl has a boyfriend. I know it hurts!” This meant I was finished with the McDonald’s girl. I felt calm at first. Then I started having negative thoughts in less than an hour. The decision of whether or not to sit at her table the next day seemed more scary than it should have seemed. There was a little bit of perceived risk in both choices. Also, I vaguely remember fearing that I would be humiliated a little bit. I thought “maybe I was too ambitious” (this thought is a big no no), but then I had these positive thoughts:

• My mental model, with lasting regret and lack of freedom being a worse danger, is still correct.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. This suffering is part of the path to an extremely beautiful situation that I’m looking for.
• This is better than the previous situations with other girls. This time I went so far and finished the situation in less than a month. I hit a new PR. (Very important)

I was slowly becoming nauseated. I constantly thought about the situation. That night, I felt so much shame, and multiple times in the same night I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere. In the beginning, the positive thoughts didn’t stop the discomfort, but they did prevent me from being owned by the discomfort or doubting myself.

That evening, in the shower, I realized that what I was experiencing was the growth of only one person, and that I could try to have a ripple effect. Later, this led to sharing of wisdom and encouragement, and eventually Project Pansystellar. This stuff might be described in another post.

The next day, at lunch, I did not have the strength to sit at the table with the McDonald’s girl or at the table where I sat previously, so I sat far away by myself near a tree and facing a field of grass. In retrospect, this was the right choice. It was therapeutic. I had a huge need for rest.

I developed a mindset of fully allowing and embracing this level of discomfort in me, just like falling when learning how to walk, or like recovering after intense workout. On the next day (March 21), I changed my senior quote submission from “I accept control over Lemmy’s code to sabotage Reddit, not Lemmy” to “Try, mess up, have nauseating embarrasment. Better than no ambition.”

Before March 24, I had these thoughts:

• All I did wrong (not morally wrong) was I didn’t ask if the girl had a boyfriend (as mentioned earlier), and I didn’t recognize the lack of sufficient connection after 2 or 3 times of sitting at her table at lunch. The idea that I messed up more severely was an illusion.
• Reducing one’s level of ambition is a poor substitute for tweaking the goal that is thought of. In other words, only change how the ambition is applied. (This turned out to be a important concept, and it’s very fundamental to my design approach for the Pansystellar Architecture.) (In this situation, I decided to make my goal include finding a girl that I develop a deep enough connection with easily enough in the beginning. This did not fix everything, as you will see in a future post.)
• Physical attraction, either to or from me, should be mostly ignored. (This one is not very useful, and it’s probably false. The underlying problems can be solved differently, partly using things from my other posts.)

Around a month later, I realized that my discomfort and doubt after finding out that the McDonald’s girl had a boyfriend was probably mostly an attack from Satan, and that a person like me having the persistence needed for the path to marriage and parenthood is probably scary to Satan because it’s a path to things that strongly oppose Satan’s vision for society, including these things which all cause increased similarity to Jesus:

• Obsession with the happiness of someone other than myself
• Positively influencing the world through how I raise my children

Eventually I knew that the motorcycle boy was surprised that I didn’t know that the McDonald’s girl had a boyfriend.

I quickly began to see this as just a high school memory.

Key ideas:

• Don’t treat uncertain information as very likely to be true (in this case, the girl having interest in me that I should act on).
• Someone being interested in you is not necessarily a special and important situation. (Seeing your ability to do something that makes someone feel good is different)
• Other people can overestimate your knowledge about someone.
• An uncomfortable situation is not a forbidden situation.
• Taking a break can be a good choice.
• Think of the past and the future so you can recognize self-improvement and not falsely see your current situation as being disconnected from goodness. To be clear, you shouldn’t try too hard to make your specific actions connect with a future goal.
• Emotions don’t accurately reveal something about you. Judge your actions and decisions using reason. Be skeptical of negative emotions.
• Modify the mental system that ambition is applied to, instead of reducing the level of ambition. Resting is an exception to this.
• Allow the present to be like a childhood memory.

Edit: to clarify, my discomfort was about the situation I perceived myself to be facing, not about the fact that the girl had a boyfriend

Edit 2: something very important I forgot to mention: my transition into having less social anxiety than average might have happened around the end of this story