What would be the hardest thing for you to bring yourself to do? This question came up last Saturday night, when some friends and I were playing a particularly probing game of Truth. "Testing our embarrassment threshold," my friend called it. First, in response to this question, we went for the comfortably abstract: arguing against the existence of God on national television, selling one's body as a whore in Las Vegas, sleeping with a particularly unsavory person. But then Katie comes up with a scenario that blows our socks off:

"What if," she begins, "You had to gather all the people you had ever had crushes on but were to chicken too tell, and explain to each of them exactly why you never told them?"

Now, to fully understand the significance of this idea, you must understand that several of my friends and I have had a severe case of late-fall fever lately. We have been quite given to waxing poetical about the physical perfection and delightful intellect of certain members of the opposite sex-- but we've all been reluctant to reveal our feelings. In fact, for some of us (i.e. me), NOT telling has been a lifelong pattern, only occasionally broken by a spontaneous burst of bravery. Other than a short stage in 8th grade where I tried to ask out everything that moved, most of my crush objects have remained blissfully unaware. Such an audience would include virtually everyone I've ever been attracted to.

To explain to them--one by one, in detail, how I had felt and why they never knew about it--would be excruciating. Some of my reasoning was pretty faulty, obviously the result of an overdeveloped fear of rejection. "I didn't tell you because you talked to Silvia a lot and I thought maybe you might like her. And in that case I better get out of the way because obviously you two are meant to be." To detail my feelings would be even worse: the way I scribbled Super Fine Lion Boy's name all over my tenth grade folders and then erased it so he wouldn't see it, the agonized diary entries after I had, once again, lost my voice when Tyler Corvette tried to talk to me. Being near-obsessed with James Wutz in spite of his constant insults-- somehow, I mistook this for flirting.

This last one would have laughed in my face. He would have cursed my acne-ridden skin and oily hair and called me "Lezzy" for good measure. And there are others who would have said, "You don't even know me," or "You're just a kid," or simply, "Ew."

But then there would be the positive reactions, and then would come regret. I can hear the boy with the root beer eyes saying, "Why didn't you ever tell me? I liked you too." And I would have to answer, "I was just too scared." I was too scared of how beautiful he was, of what his mother might say, of the idea that he might like my best friend instead of me. Piss-poor reasons to close myself off from what might have been good.

I am still beating myself up years later for not taking the chance in what now seem like obvious situations. I let my uncertainty overpower me. Time and again, I forgot that it is not the rejection itself but the anticipation of rejection that's the worst part. The actual pain of rejection goes away quickly, taking along with it my crush. It can even be relieving, freeing me from the obligation of thinking about the person 24/7. It's just the build-up that's so terrifying, the dread of some hypothetically horrible outcome. Ironically, if one never says anything, one will never know the outcome anyway. Rejection is worst at the moment, and then gradually fades. Regret lasts a lifetime.

I know this. So why do I continue to choose regret over rejection? Perhaps it's simply the inertia of inaction. It's so much easier to sit at my desk and talk to my roommate about some abstract hot guy in some abstract class rather than making the effort of actually knocking on his door and making it real. My fantasies are under my own control. It is hard to risk this idealized world for the uncertainties of reality.

I know that this pattern of behavior is not healthy. I know that every time I give in to my fear it makes me weaker. I know it betrays my lack of trust in myself and my lack of trust in God. I know that, logically, fantasies are not as good as love. But I am tired of knowing this and not acting on it. I hope that some day soon I'll be brave enough to face up to my fears--and do the hard thing.