So little casual goes into acting casual. My foreign crush stopped speaking to me about four months ago. I certainly liked him more than other crushes that come and go, no matter how unreasonable it all may have seemed, but I did my best to keep most of it in my private writing. You’ve only heard about him a handful of times. None of my friends have heard about him in months. I definitely paced my apartment and spoke to myself aloud about him on more than one occasion, but it was all waiting for August. Of course nothing would ever really come of all of this and I should have been upset with him for ignoring me (which of course I spoke to myself about aloud at length and eventually knew why I wasn’t feeling that way, as well as why I felt the way I did about him and the most probable reasons he didn’t feel the same.) -But if there was another opportunity to see him one last time, I’d still enjoy having it. If there wasn’t, I could work on dropping the idea, so I wanted to know what options were on the table. Last we spoke we’d made plans that when he visited the country and came to my city in September we’d spend a day or two together. In order to free up my schedule I was planning on taking the day off work, which requires one month’s notice, hence the need for one last attempt at reaching out in August and no later.

I also had to refrain from messaging him any sooner because if he decided to ignore me, it would look too desperate to make another attempt. So, I waited. Sure, out of the blue I sent a random meme that went ignored 2 months ago, but besides that he had never replied to my last two messages and I knew I couldn’t make another move until August. (Although the last message I’d received from him was an apology for not replying to me lately.) I factored in the time difference, the date of his flight when he might not be available to reply, the date by which I’d need to let my office know my request for time off, that he might not reply to me right away, and that I couldn’t start off with asking him about September. So, on the right date, at the right time, I thought about my message. It couldn’t be long and overwhelming. At first I thought I’d make it flirty. I thought maybe I’d entice him into answering with a compliment, but I still wasn’t sure of the real reason he’d stopped sending me messages. “Hey sexy” if he’d lost interest in me would be too forward. “Hey you” was too intimate and overwhelming for this long of a gap. What if he’d stopped speaking to me because he was worried I’d gotten too attached? “Hey Mr. super-busy” could sound sarcastic or just plain weird. Maybe it was best to ignore that he hadn’t been speaking to me all that time because of “busy-ness.”

He’d made a FaceBook post about seeing whales from his boat which I’d liked the day before I messaged him. This made for great timing. It would seem like I’d forgotten him, I’d seen an interesting post pop up in the newsfeed about him, thought of him again, and therefore was reaching out to catch up. I went with, “Hey, been a while, how’ve you been?” Casual. I was as excited about receiving his reply as I’d been when we’d started talking, even if it had sounded so formal with my name after “hey.” I asked him about the whales. I ended every message with a question to keep him talking. I made a great segue into the topic of travel. On day two of him replying, I finally brought it up as if it hadn’t been the plan the entire time. Had his plans moved around since we last spoke, because I think I could still fit him into my schedule if he was interested. When was his trip again? It’s not like it’s been on my calendar for half a year or anything…And guess who has a final date with her crush in September! …But there was nothing casual behind my sounding casual. What I really want is to find the person I can freely chatter away to without any planning at all. That’s who I really want to be with. Mastering dating isn’t anything anymore. Dating is just a game with strategic tactics, lines, and moves where you play the best version of you. I lost interest in dating long ago. What I want is a relationship where I’m just me amazing, nutty, judgmental, sweet and everything in-between all rolled into one, all the time.