Naivete

I'm suddenly feeling like I'm at crossroads with my life. Perhaps.

Feelings are so fickle. Or perhaps deceptive. Or perhaps in the middle of my intense emotional state I'm finding it harder to distinguish between my head and my heart. Boys are confusing. And love is confusing. The love that has had the chance to bloom and the love that might bloom. Add a couple of instances where different members of the opposite sex seem to respond to some hidden attraction, and one ends up being even more confused than one started out with.

Late bloomer. Rational thinker. Giddy female.

Innocent and naive on one hand, cautious and aware on the other. The switch from one to the other is instantaneous and never quite expected. I went out yesterday with Azreen, Davina, Nat and Hafriz; we ended up at a random bar listening to a live band. In any case, while I accompanied Pudtz to the ladies, a guy who had escorted his sick, drunk friend to the unisex toilets, we fell into conversation. I was happily talking to him, in the easy, interested way that I usually talk to people I've just met when he queried about my relationship status. Heh. So is that what they call being hit on? Where I bet most of my female counterparts would've just brushed him off, I totally froze. I swear I'm spastic at times. It was my luck that Pudtz came out at the moment, and I walked off with a polite smile and a backwards glance.

Perhaps my brain's just not tuned into that wavelength. I'm absolute crap when it comes to flirting consciously, because I don't even think about it. When a situation like that comes along, I have no idea how to react.

It shouldn't be a big deal to say "I'm sorry, not interested." Except that one soft side of me which hasn't really had much experience in the way of men, which turns that simple gesture into one huge obstacle, that part of me that wants to avoid hurting anyone.

Help me out here. What's the nicest way to give someone the brush-off?