Tonight’s the night when i will force myself to overcome my fears my crippling social anxiety and go on my first date in nearly 4 years. It will be my first official date as a adult women and I’m overcome with terror and excitement at the thought on embarking on a date with a man I’ve only interacted with on tinder. My previous dates were when i was a precocious adolescent who wasn’t inflicted with a crippling social anxiety but was a shy awkward teenager. I can recall going to the cinema or bowling with teenage crushes but nothing really happened on these innocent teenage dates.
Today though at the tender age of 19 i am going on my first date in nearly 4 years. I have spent the past years never having the gumption to ask men whom I’m sexually armoured with on a date. I have lost my virginity in a handful of drunken one night stands in meaningless promiscuous sexual encounters. Now i want something real to cultivate a emotional connection with another soul that’s why i finally taken the plunge and going out facing my fears and actually going on a date.
The date is tonight i have intercommunicated with this individual who calls himself Kyle who is 21 years old. I looked at the entire gamut of his tinder and instagram photos I am enticed by his physical appearance. He wasn’t trying to hard there is no shirtless selfies no thirst trap cringe inducing photographs but casually confident images that projected to me a self assured confidence and unusual degree of earnestness. In our multitude of messaging conversations over the preceding months i built up an idea of how this man is what is personality is. He isn’t a stereotypical tinder egomaniac machismo man he appears to be a amicable kind considerate young man.
When I first set my tinder profile and uploaded a variety of my finest photographs that projected a positive image of myself to prospective male suitors i was filled with apprehension and enormous anxiety. Still the anxiety remains but i feel I have made enormous strides in overcoming my social phobia. Being on tinder has given me these moments of enormous validation of myself where men are actually attracted to me. I’ve had a horrible negative opinion on myself seeing myself as a hideously deformed freak who no man in their right man would find alluring. As well as suffering from a pernicious social anxiety i also suffer since i was a teenager from body dysmorphia. This means I have a severely altered perception of my physical attractiveness than other humans. I eschew most normal social functions never am able to peer at myself in the mirror because of how horrified i am at the ghastly image that appears in the mirror. The body dysmorphia is why I remain perennially single alone without love without sex. The thought of physical or emotional intimacy is terrifying to me to be that vulnerable with another person especially a person you have profound feelings for.
In spite of the paralysing social anxiety the self loathing the neurotic fears that circulate in my psyche I prepare myself for this date with Kyle. Kyle is a 21 year old training to be a mental health counsellor he lives within the local area of Cambridge a town where i am studying and residing. He live within 10 miles of each other so meeting up for a rendezvous is easy as he live in close proximity to each other. After many months of talking sharing photographs casual flirting talking profusely online about our interests we have finally set a date for our first physical in the flesh meeting. Tonight we will meet up at the local Italian restaurant within the Cambridge town centre. It’s a modest Italian restaurant that’s well within our price range. I a struggling student living on a meagre budget supplemented by my part time job at a local bookshop can ill afford to fork out on a lavish night out in a prestigious restaurant. Hence he agreed to meet up in this reasonable but charming Italian restaurant called Pinocchios for a night of engaging flirtatious conversation complemented with liberal quantities of alcohol.
Its 6 o’clock in the evening i am diligently getting ready for a night of possibilities. The anxiety is off the scales i can hardly breathe i am at risk of suffering another traumatic harrowing panic attack. The idea of making myself beautiful of going out into the cruel world with judgemental people with my slender body on show and having to appear interesting and charismatic to a prospective lover is filling my heart with terror with disquiet. The fear at what could transpire on this night the humiliation the possibility of a anxiety attack in public is constant. I can’t rid myself of the fear the loathing that is pulsating in my neurotic consciousness as I soak my homely disfigured body in the bath. I have meticulously prepared the appropriate attire that i will clothe my body in. I purchased several week ago a sender low cut black maxi dress which i purchased in the unlikely scenario of me going out on a date. Tonight I will wear this alluring beguiling dress that hopefully will convince Kyle that i am a beautiful women. Hopefully he will look past all my glaring physical imperfections and see this beguiling dress.
I remove my body out of the wet hot steaming bath now i am shaking with nerves barely able to walk or hold by electric toothbrush from the anxiety that’s radiating round my body. I frantically brush my teeth trying assiduously to keep my toothbrush steady in my mouth. I grimace with horror as I glimpse my gnarled visage in the bathroom mirror. This pallid ghostlike person that is looking at me fills me with loathing and disgust. I think to myself how is this person going to convince a kind interesting young man to fall in love with her. I disappear from the bathroom feeling refreshed and revitalised washing away all that filth and sickness from my body. Now i can hide myself in the fortress of my room wherein i can plaster my face in my feminine war paint in order to conceal to obscure my flaws my cracks. Hopefully with enough war paint i can by some miracle appear beautiful to Kyle.
