We'd been talking for about ten days and the date was set for last Thursday, a pretty low stakes first meeting, coffee at a place we'd both suggested independently which felt like a good sign. I was genuinely looking forward to it for most of the week and then Thursday came and I woke up in that specific mood where everything feels slightly harder than it should and by four in the afternoon I had talked myself into a version of tired that I'm not sure was entirely real. I texted her that I wasn't feeling well, which was true in the loosest possible interpretation of the phrase, and she was completely gracious about it and said we'd reschedule and that was the whole exchange.
The guilt showed up about an hour later and hasn't really left. I was playing on my phone that evening doing nothing that justified cancelling plans for and I kept coming back to the same uncomfortable awareness that I hadn't been sick, I'd been avoidant, and that there's a version of me that does this specific thing when something has enough potential to feel scary. I have some money saved up and I'd already half planned where I'd take her if the first one went well, which is either sweet or the exact thing that made me cancel, I'm still not sure which. She doesn't know any of this and from her end it was just a rescheduled coffee.
We're supposed to meet this Saturday and I've confirmed twice which is probably its own kind of overcorrection. I'm going to go and I know it'll probably be fine and I know the cancellation wasn't a catastrophe, she was kind about it, nobody got hurt, it was one Thursday evening. But I keep thinking about the pattern underneath it, the way I can talk myself out of something I actually want when the wanting starts to feel like too much exposure, and I don't totally know what to do with that information except show up on Saturday and see what happens.