Later that evening, I thought maybe I had overreacted to what happened on Facebook. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten so mad just because Evelyn Tiger was a sore loser.

Besides, I didn't even really know her. Maybe, I was making the mistake I always watched myself from making. Prejudice. Maybe what I saw on Facebook was just the first impression I got of her.

Sometimes this happened to me. I would brag a lot about how I hate prejudice and first impressions, only to be the first one to immediately judge someone by the way they appeared to me in our first predicament.

But the thing about me is this. Whenever something involving other people happened to me, I would act instinctively, without even asking myself if what I'm doing or saying is right or wrong.

That's due to my social anxiety. Like, a lot of people say they have it, but they probably don't know the first thing about it.

My social anxiety was a state that occurred whenever I was near to someone I didn't know, or had just met, or knew a little but not enough, in which I would feel tense the whole time. I would have my eyes open, like, too open, but they would almost never look in the other's eyes, and I would also have a weird smile on my face. My hands would go all over my body, sweating in the process, and my thoughts would be a mess.

Now, I'm no doctor, so I don't have any fancy word to describe this good, but I can try. Imagine you had a box (my head) containing a lot of great stuff neatly put in there with caution and dedication (my thoughts), and you'd be all careful with that box, 'cause it's perfect the way it is, but then someone (my social anxiety) would come, take that box, and shake the hell out of it.

Not only would it piss you off, but it would also mess up all the neat stuff you had in there.

So, when I found myself in social relations, my head would get shaken and my thoughts would be a mess.

And that resulted in a dangerous lack of social skills, culminating in me saying awkward stuff and people getting a first wrong impression of me.

Engaging in a social relation was, for me, like an oral exam, where you're so tense and you don't know what they might ask you and if you'd know the answer to it, and, sometimes, your mouth would let out stuff that wouldn't even go through the brain first, because, otherwise, you might end up in an awkward silence.

The Internet, though, was different. The Internet was that place where social anxiety disappeared, where you had time to think about what to say, unlike reality. On the Internet, every fool looks cool.

So, the Internet could make me look sharp and sociable, which made it the perfect place for me to engage in a social relationship and actually try to make some friends.

I was, in fact, 90% sure that the new people I was going to meet at school would have gotten a bad first impression of me. The 10% was maintained by the fact that Andrew Hook was going to be there, so people would have seen me having a friend and maybe they would have thought that I could actually be an interesting person.

So, maybe, if I surrounded myself with friends, then they would have thought that I was a cool guy.

I went back on Facebook and before I could even find her name in the chat list, she sent me a message herself. She was actually online on that secondary profile of hers. Something in my head told me that she was waiting for me. Could it be? Was she waiting for me to come back online and make up? Why else would she be online on the secondary profile?

– hey i'm not a sore loser. let's start over alright?

That message, as poorly written as it was, actually made me feel better, but I still felt like rebutting.

– I don't understand why you wouldn't just accept your loss and, I don't know, congratulate me?

– i'm sorry alright. i'm not used to people beating me. i'm the best at this game.

If she was the best, then there was no competition is what I thought, but here's where the beauty of the Internet kicked in.

Maybe, if this was a face to face conversation, I would have said what I thought, resulting in being rude. But, on the Internet, I had time to think of what to say.

– Okay. I guess I can get over this.

Sharp enough.

– you're a nice boy. i gotta go now, but promise u'll be here tmrw, cuz i wanna get to know u.

That moment, I felt cheerful inside. She wanted to get to know me. Me. Nobody ever wanted anything to do with me, and she wanted to know me. The Internet strategy was working. If I kept that up, I would have gotten quite a few friends by the end of August, and I would have been cool when school started.

– I'll be here.

And so she went offline, as I was wagging my foot like a dog's tail.

It was almost as if things were starting to look up when it came to social relations, and I couldn't be any happier about it.

Meanwhile, I got a text on my phone from Belle, who, as usual, asked me if I wanted to hang out the next day.

"Sure thing I will," I replied to her text, "and boy do I have things to tell you!"

I glanced at the clock and realized that it was time to sleep, and, when I was about to turn off my computer, I saw a notification on Facebook.

I quickly clicked on it and, when I read it, my heart got a little warmer.

Evelyn Tiger accepted your friend request.

• — • — • — • — • — • — • — •

Back in 2011 I was battling with insomnia and I was winning.

For, well, basically fifteen years of my life, I'd had this problem that I couldn't get to sleep.

Like, I would go to bed, close my eyes, but not be able to shut my thoughts down.

The fun fact is that, when and if I finally managed to sleep, I would sleep for hours and hours.

It was really frustrating, it would take me over an hour to sleep, sometimes I wouldn't manage to do it at all, so I would try to go to sleep earlier, way earlier, like nine.

And that was only worse, because, at my usual bedtime, though I couldn't sleep, I still felt sleepiness, but at nine, I wasn't sleepy at all.

As of late though, thanks to an infusion I'd get in the evening, I was overcoming these difficulties.

Mostly, though, I believe, thanks to clearing my head before getting some sleep. It was more of a psychological thing, of course. I would act as if I had a brush inside my head and wipe out all the thoughts that haunted it.

Well, that night I couldn't clear my head. It was all about me tossing and turning in bed.

Because Evelyn Tiger just had to accept my friend request on Facebook before going to bed.

It was her primary profile. All her private photos were unlocked to me.

I immediately clicked on her profile. She was tagged by other people in a lot of photos. Some on her own, some with company.

This girl actually had a pretty good social life.

She definitely had more friends than I did, which was not really that hard to do, and she had a lot of likes on her photos.

I asked myself what in the world a girl with a social life would be doing on a group of wrestling nerds, but then I thought that maybe I was just stereotyping.

Just because one is a social animal and has friends doesn't mean that they can't enjoy nerdy stuff.

She had a lot of photos with this guy who looked like an ape, I didn't know whether it was her friend, brother, boyfriend or arranged husband.

She also had a lot of photos with girls. Some looked nice, others looked kind of jerky. But I couldn't judge, that was only the first impression I had of them.

I opened a picture where she was alone. She was sitting at a table with ice cream in front of her, and was looking at the camera with her eyebrows raised and her mouth half-smiling.

Her eyes were extremely blue. Like you could see the reflection of the ocean in them even if she was looking at a night sky. I liked them, I couldn't look away from them, but at the same time, they rather frightened me.

Her eyes were a delightful horror. Something of divine.

And that delightful horror is what kept me up half the night.

I couldn't help but think of the many possibilities this girl was bringing to the table.

She could have become a friend of mine, so I would have had a cool friend. Maybe even something more.

I mean, if I kept on playing the card of being cool on the Internet, then maybe I could have even looked... I don't know... attractive?

Whatever the outcome, it was a girl. A girl who wanted to know me. A girl who liked wrestling and other nerdy stuff. What more could I possibly ask for?

So these thoughts kept me up that night. I tried to read, but I was too tired for that.

So I decided to go with a new episode of The Vampire Diaries and I fell asleep ten minutes before it was over.

***

Thanks for reading, delightful robbers, I would appreciate a lot if you'd vote!

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Next chapter on TUESDAY!

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