*Disclaimer: This is a long post but I think I learnt a few things and I would appreciate anyone's advice as well.*

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So my prom is coming up next week. Admittedly, it was pretty late to be asking people to prom, and though I didn’t really like anyone, I figured it would be nice to take someone and so I thought of a girl I had previously found cute that was in my year level.

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Let’s call this girl “Rachel”.

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Now I had never talked to Rachel before. We knew each other from friendship groups and we were in the same year level anyways. Rachel had a boyfriend (LTR of somewhere around 1-2 years). However, two days ago I had heard from one of her close friends that she was no longer with him. So as you could see, the opportunity presented itself to me. And I had to take it.

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The thing was Rachel was hardly alone, if ever. So it made me even harder for me to approach her. That was when her friend told me that she would typically arrive early to school and study by herself in the library. So what did I do? I went almost an hour earlier to school to just do it.

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As I entered the school and started walking towards the school library, I felt the nerves kicking in. I told myself “if I don’t ask her, then someone else will” and that “we’re all going to die anyways”. It helped and I just said fuck it and approached her. No shit I felt nervous, but I just walked towards Rachel, sat down next to her and was direct in my approach. If there was one lesson that I learnt from this moment: it was that **you will always feel a bit of nervousness**. The longer you wait the worse it typically gets. If you’re expecting to get rid of the nervousness before approaching, then you might as well not approach. **You’ve just got to approach DESPITE that nervous feeling.** Embrace it and do it anyways. I could have turned back anytime as I was halfway already walking towards her in the library, but I did it anyways despite feeling nervous.

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Okay, so she said yes and I was pretty happy with it. *I fucking did it.* I didn’t show her I was gleaming with joy but when I walked out the library I felt fucking amazing. I was now in a flow state.

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I told a few friends about it and that shit spread like wildfire. Suddenly almost everyone knew. People started asking me about it and no doubt others were gossiping behind our backs.

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Fast forward after school, it’s around night time 7pm or so. I receive a text from Rachel where she says that she ended up changing her mind. Her reason was that we weren’t very close to each other and with prom being next week, she felt like it would be awkward. I convinced her to hang out a few times leading up to prom and tried to frame it positively towards my side, but she told me she was concrete in her decision, that she was sorry, admired my courage and hoped that I understood her choice. I respected it. I told her it was okay and that she should take it as a compliment.

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So this all happened today. I didn’t even touch my books after school and just began to think about everything. I have some new thoughts and a few questions.

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  1. Rejection hurts, yes, but cold approach rejection feels hardly as painful as being rejected by someone whom you've known for a while for example in school. Of course, you should have an abundance mindset always. And having this mindset makes cold approach rejection feels less stinging because you don't even know the person. Whereas I knew Rachel, and wasn't really interested until a month before prom (where I found out she was no longer with her boyfriend just recently) and she was the only girl that I wanted to take to prom. I didn't want to take anyone else for the sake of it, or settle for less.

- This leads to my question. Was Rachel's reasons for changing her mind valid? I mean I could tell she was nervous when I had approached her and asked her out. It was in the heat of the moment, and I doubt she was expecting me to do it.