As young adults, advice is thrown at us left and right. Some with differing counter opinions. For example, some parents tell their kids to keep their head down, work hard and power through high school while others tell their children not to take themselves too seriously and to enjoy their high school career. Some may say that treasuring memories by taking pictures is the best way to appreciate the special moments in life while others may preach that the way to cherish moments is to put the camera down and to enjoy it with only your mind. One of these larger differing opinions that has haunted me during my entire young adult life is s whether to "shoot your shot", so to speak, or to stop looking for a relationship and to let it find you.
Recently I have been caught in the messy crossfire of the above statements. Graduation was approaching and as the shy girl that I always am was feeling self-conscious about my high school dating experience. These minimal experiences can barely be called so, but for the purpose of the article, I will refer to these as "relationships".
In theory, my plan was to simply test the waters of both sides of the opinion. First, I shot my shot and snapped a guy that was way out of my league. With a simple "hey dude", I was almost immediately left on read. In retrospect, I realize this "left on read" nonsense was partly my fault because of my lack of a worthy conversation starter. Despite this, I laughed it off, red-faced and cringing in the privacy of my own car. With that fail in mind, I moved to the other side of the opinion which, by the way, was way harder than snapping a quick pic, adding a worthless caption and pressing the "send" button.
Waiting around for a relationship was excruciating. I felt desperate and lonely. It was almost as if I was stuck looping through my own montage of Netflix, binge shopping online and drinking chocolate milk. This was all until, out of the blue, I received a snapchat from a completely different guy. Was it a fluke or was this guy sent by the gods in order to stop me from my endless wallowing in chocolate milk and New Girl? This guy seemed interested within the first couple of days, but of course, the feeling started to fizzle after he referred to his car as "the greatest machine you will ever lay your eyes on". I don't know why I was immediately repulsed by the statement, but that's beside the point.
Even though neither of these experiences significantly made my life better, it taught me something. It showed me that there is no "right way" to find a guy that you actually like. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there, even though you may get shot down, and sometimes waiting it out and wallowing a little will show you that being by yourself is okay too. We're only in college after all, those days should be spent finding yourself, not finding someone for yourself.
