Shy is not one of my personal adjectives. If you get to know me, you will know this. But fear of rejection is a phobia I hide in my heart and it seriously affects my social life. It prevents me from maintaining friendships with more than three people at any one time. But now, coming at this moment out of a rotten marriage to an agressive, dictatorial and emotionally abusive alchoholic, you might think that shy would be a good way to describe how I was feeling. I was definitely a few quarts low on the self confidence meter, but shy? No, I wasn’t shy. I was totally scared to death.
This felt like my big moment arriving, and I was completely unprepared for it. Every good quality I had been dreaming about in a husband was suddenly present in front of me, and he was inviting me to send him a message. The ‘Send A Message’ button was right there in front of me, practically begging me to push it. I had returned to my computer, half expecting the miracle ad to no longer be there, but there it was, patiently waiting my return. I sat and stared at the face of the man in the ad. I liked his eyes, they looked like the sharp eyes of a deep thinker. I liked his ad, he obviously put a lot of thought into it. I liked his unpolished English maybe best of all, and his mistakes inspired me to believe him. And finally, I liked his suit, he looked like a very respectable, professional man. I thought we’d look very nice together!