Ask MeCha: Tell me how I should feel. (Warning: long and melodramatic.) →[More:]
You may recall I posted a couple of times in the fall talking about making a quilt from felted sweaters. I started on Halloween weekend.

The quilt's recipient -- the person for whom the entire thing was conceived and carried out -- was to be a guy I've had a longstanding, heartbreakingly tenacious crush on. We're friends, and I keep my feelings in my pocket because, well, there's nothing to be gained from wearing them on my sleeve -- he knew how I felt and nothing ever happened between us, and since I figured that out I've just tried to keep it to myself as much as possible. I'd like to hang out with him more but he's really busy and also socially inept to the point of sometimes seeming autistic, so I play it cool.

Late Friday night or early Saturday morning, the 19th/20th, I emailed him and said that I had an xmas present. I told him that it's not the sort of thing I can just carry with me in case I run into him, but didn't say what it was or that it was large or anything like that. So I just asked where and when I could give it to him.

I hadn't heard back from him in a few days, so two or three days later I sent a Facebook message.

(Back story: His email is a Hotmail address, but I think he might be abandoning it for a couple of reasons. One, who uses Hotmail anymore? It's such a spam trap. And two, there was a situation last winter where someone he knew was regularly reading his email. Three, he uses a Gmail address for a music project he operates. The point being, I suspect he might have transitioned to another address, but since we don't communicate by email a lot, I haven't asked. We have communicated by Facebook before.)

I suppose it was Monday I sent the Facebook message, and he hasn't replied.

Now. Here are a few other thoughts:

- I could have phoned and saved the trouble. Lesson learned. I was just too chicken -- I'm very phone-averse, and more than ever lately.

- He could have already departed to visit his family for the holidays. (He is an expatriate from Virginia.) This could mean he's not around a computer or not bothering to keep up on correspondence or he could be travelling around and too busy to have even logged in.

- I know that there can be any number of reasons people don't reply to email. I used to be frustrated and hurt by this phenomenon until one day I was That Person, the one who doesn't reply to email, with no particular excuse. It just happens. We get out of habit or get bored with it or whatever.

- To counter the previous point, I think if someone says they have a gift for you, that is one time you should get off your duff and reply. I *think* I would reply in that situation... I think.

- He could have read it, for some reason not known how to reply, and closed it. I would prefer not to believe this, but sometimes I am amazed by the social ineptitude of adults. (He is 30, but the social ineptitude/awkwardness I mentioned is quite real.)

- He could have read it, and ignored it, deciding that I should take my stupid gift and mate with it. I think this is unlikely, because he is genuinely a kind person, and he has no hard feelings toward me (that I am aware of -- but even paranoid me would have to really stretch to come up with fears of hard feelings.)

I can definitely see myself feeling this way (bummed, rejected, a little hurt) about any old gift, but I put a lot of thought and a lot of time and a little bit of money into this quilt. I truly made it with love, from start to finish. I had never done anything like this before, so the process was all trial and error and guessing and fudging and ripping out stitches and starting again -- but truly enjoyable because it was for him. And I'm sad and hurt that he doesn't seem to want it. (He doesn't even know what it is, but that doesn't stop me from feeling hurt.)

And I also feel bad because I think it is such a wonderful gift, and such a nice quilt, and I would really like him to have a really nice, warm quilt. That has been my primary goal in this endeavour -- aside from any romantic feelings I have/had for him, I know that most of my friends don't own nice household stuff, and mostly use thrift-store stuff or hand-me-downs from their families. I really liked the idea of giving him something warm and nice and soft that he could use and that would give him nice sleeps. The part about my efforts being noticed or appreciated is far, far less important to me. Practically unimportant, but since I'm human, not entirely. I can truthfully say that my motives have been (perhaps uncharacteristically) on the up-and-up, though.

This post is coming out incoherent. My sleep has been all crazy lately as I try to stay on a normal schedule despite, y'know, normal daytime activities, and obviously some things have been rough in my life in the past few weeks. Let me know if it doesn't make sense. I just want to know what would be the most reasonable assumptions and feelings to be having in this situation.

Maybe it is even too soon to be feeling rejected about this, given the holidays?

Sigh.

Can I have a bunny?