Better to ask and be disappointed than to always wonder what if…?

I was thinking back to the last time I felt a strong attraction/connection to a person I had just met.  I would have been 25 years old and recently divorced.  I walked into a bank and when the teller smiled at me it just about floored me.  I probably stared longer than politeness allows, but she was just amazing.

Unfortunately, my self-esteem was at a low ebb and I just took for granted that she was out of my league.  Couldn’t get her out of my head though and on Valentines Day I sent her a dozen roses anonymously.  Several months later I accepted a job in Fort Smith, Arkansas and went into the bank to close out my account.  Sure enough, the beautiful lass was once again my teller.

As my business was completed, I told her how much I had appreciated her kindness and warm smile during my time as a customer.  She exclaimed “Oh my God!  It was you!  I’ve been trying to figure out all this time who sent me those roses!”  I confessed to having been a secret admirer since that first day I had seen her.  She looked me in the eyes and said “I wish you would have told me”.

There was a lesson to be learned from that.  Who knows if she was “the one” I let get away.  Odds are that I would have fucked up that relationship like all the others in my life, but maybe not.  Well, you can’t go back in time but all these years later I’ve remembered being rejected is not the worst possible outcome.

“Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.” 
― Richard Bach