Microstory 241: Perspective Sixteen

This is an experimental Perspectives microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 225. More to follow.

There he is; the guy I have a crush on. I feel like I’ve been staring at him through the diner window for hours. I can’t see very well through the glass, but people inside can see me clear as day. And they’re all talking about me. I need to make a decision to either go inside or move on. He’s approaching the son of one of our coworkers who he can relate to because he has a low level of maturity. And that’s what makes me feel so bad. He told me that he was diagnosed with borderline intellectual something. I can’t remember the full term, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bigoted, or anything. I just don’t know if I’m allowed to be attracted to someone like that. He’ll always have that learning disability, and I would always be explaining things to him, just like I already do. But is it fair to be in a relationship with someone who’s not smart enough to fully grasp what that relationship means? Or does he understand it, and I’m just being ignorant? Is it bigoted to not be in a relationship with him because of his condition. Oh man, I feel like such a bad person for these thoughts, but I can’t help it. It is my curse to overthink things. I actually have a medical condition of my own, which is probably what attracted me to him. Most people really focus on the compulsive part of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but those compulsions are not the underlying problem. People have stray thoughts all the time, but I have them all the time. In every situation I encounter, I think about every possible outcome, and every choice I could make. This sounds like science fiction, but it’s all about consolidation. I don’t literally think through each potential future. I just consider the possibilities and what kind of choices I would have to make for those to occur. The problem with that is most of the possibilities are extremely remote. The person I’m talking to is probably not going to turn into a vampire, and there probably won’t be a meteorite that will give me superpowers, but these kind of possibilities just consume me, and I have to work extremely hard to ignore them. I realized my condition when I was pretty young, and I developed coping mechanisms to help me function in the world. I’ve gotten pretty good at acting like a normal person, but I still stand out. That brings us back around to my crush. He doesn’t judge me or question me, and I could really use more of that in my life. But not right now. If I go in now, I’ll likely slip on the floor and break my back. I’ll talk to him tomorrow at work.