Nova Daily - 8 May 2026: Outside

Hi!

At some point in the upcoming months, I'll be attending a wedding. This wedding will be in a foreign country, with a national language that I hardly speak at all. I'm looking forward to it, but it's also something that I have realised will contain some emotional hurdles for me.

I don't really want to make these last posts as emo as they may be coming out, but it's a thought that I have that I want to deal with and perhaps need to get out of my system. And since writing can be therapeutic, I'll attempt to use it as such.

Outside

I remembered one of my silliest crushes. It grew from a close friendship that I never thought much of at first. It struck me as a complete surprise that I could even feel anything for this person. And yet, when during one of our chats a new hobby came up conversationally, something happened in my mind. Before this point, I thought that I had mostly figured my friend out, but with this new card being played, I started wondering what more aces might be up my friend's sleeve.

The bit of intrigue that this new revelation induced had my head all scrambled up. Something had changed, and I realised what it was much later. I was too late to catch myself in time and tell myself that this made absolutely no sense. My friend and I hadn't even met in person yet. And yet here I was, completely obsessing.

This parasocial relationship never blossomed into anything. And of course it doesn't. Consistent presence grows cloying very quickly, and then must have become claustrophobic. I was persistent and annoying as can be. Next to this, building up someone in our minds so much creates the level of expectations that no-one could possibly meet. All this created a suffocating dynamic and a pattern of behaviour that could only result in bitter disappointment, and that's precisely what I got.

I'm much better at rationalising behaviour with the blessing of hindsight, and I can write about it in a somewhat coherent way. But I think that I'd have gladly given that up for actually knowing what I'm doing, and understanding what kinds of things might have given me a fair shot.

One of the reasons why this wedding reminded me of this old situation so strongly is that this old crush is from the same country. And I believe that this may be a very good opportunity to deal with the scars that I've sustained back then. I can rewrite this foreign country with a new chapter and start associating it with something new, something happy, something fun. Fortunately, the risk of us running into each other is virtually zero. And if for whatever reason or unforeseen circumstance I do happen upon them anyway, at least I can make sure that I'll be mentally prepared for it.