u/p33w33kiwi

I genuinely have no idea what to think or if I am being delusional right now.

I, F23, have a crush on my M27 coworker. I've only been around for a year and a half. It's a small office, under 15 people work there. I'm also the only woman. He and I are the youngest as well. The rest of our colleagues are 30+. There aren't any explicit rules when it comes to dating other than using common sense and being reasonable.

I know for a fact he is single. He and I have a good relationship, but he treats me differently in comparison to the others. With everyone else, he seems more inclined to crack jokes and talk about life outside of work. With me, he seems to quiet down and doesn't give that same humorous energy. He still might lightly tease me about something and will greet me with a nickname. He's way more casual in our messages on Teams like he swears or has super laid back texting and teases me sometimes there as well. The most notable thing about our interactions to me is that for work tasks, he always gives me way more information than necessary and checks in on me and praises me even if I literally did nothing or messed something up. He doesn’t do this for anyone else to my knowledge and always follows through on things related to helping me out even if he's busy.

We don't really get a lot of time together in person, but lately, we have been spending more time together on deployments. He would hold doors open for me (big whoop I know but I haven't really had guys hold doors open for me much so it feels nice) and we would walk close together. He joked with me more than he usually would after we spent some time together during a couple stops at a location. We held actual conversations about non work related things, whereas before, it was pretty much just work talk. I am quite shy and quiet in general, but around him, it is hard to be as outgoing as I am around the other guys. I actually was supposed to go to a site but overslept and he was chill with being sent out in my stead and when I was apologizing about it he said he was worried about me but diverted the conversation back to explaining a task to me as soon as someone else came around. I think he was getting teased about me, and I may or may not have been teased about him as well from other coworkers. (Ex; I walk past him as he's talking with another colleague who, after dead silence when I enter the room, goes "you should blame (my name), she broke it" and he will go "huh... maybe..."). And of course, the mirrored body language and playing eye tag is present.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. I haven't really had many solid crushes before. I've had a boyfriend of 6 years, but we broke up about 2 years ago, so my experience is limited. Especially when it comes to like, navigating a crush.

I also feel a little discouraged. I've been trying to get more courage to show that I am receptive if the feeling is mutual. I've been greeting him more and have been messaging him more and have been getting more comfortable with speaking to him and stuff. Today he seemed off, maybe he just had a bad day or it's nothing deep at all.. but his interactions with me felt more flat than usual, and it felt like he might've been dodging me when we both left the office.

I feel lost and would appreciate some input from men instead of my girlfriends who seem to be hyping it up too much. ):

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Edit: I know the only way I can be sure of how he feels is to communicate directly with him. I am aware that there's no way to positively identify how he feels without hearing his actual input. I should've written this when I wasn't as emotionally charged lol. I guess what I'm looking for in terms of "advice" is help in discerning whether or not he's just simply tolerating me or if there's signs of him being interested.

I'm currently facing termination of aid due to completion rate, effective summer 2026. I've only been attending since Fall 2025. My GPA stands at 2.5.

Unfortunately, I fell behind quite badly and neglected school work due to not being able to manage nearly debilitating symptoms due to POTS (I was diagnosed after process of elimination and table tilt). I was also finally diagnosed with ADHD and given medication. Basically, my mental and physical health as well as job stress ruined my grades. I was unable to balance school and work despite having minimal classes as I quite literally would feel sick and unable to focus or function.

I have documentation from MyChart and provided a typed statement addressing my appeal. I submitted numerous PDFS showing my bloodwork (lots of deficiencies), test results from imaging, medications, clinical notes, and documents clearly showing the conditions I have. The documentation I provided shows that these are symptoms that have been wreaking havoc on me since adolescence.

I have already reached out to my advisor and have an appointment scheduled for the 28th. Are there any additional steps I can take to ensure the best chance at getting an appeal? I included how I've been improving in health and functionality ever since I was able to get treatment and the help I needed whereas majority of my life, I've been a medical anomaly or ignored (this has been documented and is included in my submissions).

If anyone has anything to share in regard to experience with SAP appeals, that would be awesome as the aid I receive is incredibly important to me and would hinder my progress greatly if I were to not receive it.

Today I (23F) went in and my doctor performed a table tilt test. I told her about my symptoms that I've been having since I was a teenager and the random periods of time where I've been nauseous and extremely dizzy for months/years straight off and on as well as my sudden intolerance to heat. This became a concern after I fainted after a hot shower and nearly fainted when servicing my truck when I stood up after getting out from beneath it.

My bloodwork was normal and ECG showed up fine but her concerns were raised when I did the test today despite me only feeling like I was at a 4 out of 10 on the dizziness scale after I stood up.

POTS is genetically present in my family. I did not know this until last week when I made phone calls to other female family members inquiring about what runs in our family. My doctor told me she was heavily considering but wanted to do further tests.

I'm not looking for a diagnosis or any medical advice in this post, but I'm a little down from this discovery. I'm currently transutioning out of IT and am now pursuing a career in civil engineering. I love to go outdoors and do hands-on physical work, but my growing intolerance to heat and these dizzy spells make me feel like my future will be limited and it's a fear that has recently began to gnaw at my consciousness. I never considered this a possibility and didn't know about POTS at ALL prior to recent events that took place within the last month.

If anyone has any personal stories, some advice or pointers to learn more (currently doing some scouring and research!) I would be thrilled. I want to understand POTS more, especially now that it may be a hurdle for me to get around.

To start off, a friend of mine was hosting a fourth of July party at her house. I intended to go but was unsure of my ability to attend as I had already agreed to go to my boyfriend's party to meet his family and my grandfather's for a bit as it may very well be his last due to health. I told her I wasn't sure if I'd make it or not but that I would try to. She was upset, initially saying it was fine but then backtracking after a few hours and saying "Fine, you'd rather spend time with your boyfriend. You made it out to be an emergency but just enjoy your time with (bf), I take back my invitation to you, don't show up at my house."

I was shocked at this turnaround as I didn't know she'd be this upset by me not coming. I do have self esteem issues and I've been battling through belitting myself and convincing myself I don't matter to others. I apologized and told her I should've been more present as I also didn't realize all the cleaning she and other friends had been doing, but then again I was out of the loop- it was only mentioned once in our groupchat but apparently there was effort to clean the house so it was party-ready. To sum it up I apologized to her and reassured her that her time is important to me and that I greatly appreciate her invite and I told her I'd definitely show up if she were to re-invite me, that I'd make it work.

Well.. apparently that wasn't what she was mad at me for. She told me that she was holding it in for so long (months, according to her timeline) and that ever since I started dating my current bf, that I've been getting lost in him and that if we are both at a group hangout, it feels like neither of us are there. Nobody else feels this way but her. We have friends in our group who are dating, and she never once gave them the same treatment. Her examples of this behavior made no sense either as she also displayed the same behavior when she'd bring her s/o around. She criticized my bf for being awkward socially. He has a hard time socializing and coming out of his shell, but he knew most of my friends and hung out with them before I even knew them. Her bf is also terrible at socializing but apparently that doesn't matter.

Anything I brought up was me trying to help find a solution or compromise. While I acknowledge I can't change how someone feels or "fix" something for them, I try my best to work with whoever it is I'm talking to to find common ground. She set a boundary that had already been decided upon prior to our conversation. She said she wouldn't make me sacrifice my relationship with my bf, so she would just stop coming to events or hangouts that he was present at. She held this in for months and never told me about her frustrations. She has a history of doing this. I feel confused and I don't quite see where she is coming from. She says that I don't understand her qualms but they feel all over the place and like there's some double standards happening.

Again, any behavior he and I have displayed is shared amongst any other couple in my friend group. Despite bringing him around, I make an effort to interact with everyone. I don't just fawn over him and ignore everyone else. I never complained when she exhibited that behavior with her boyfriend. She doesn't even try to interact with me nearly as much as the others in our group. I don't know how to feel. I told her that while I still love her and don't want there to be a divide between us, that I will still bring him to events. He was friends with some of our group members prior to us meeting or dating and wants to be involved. I told her that if she doesn't want to come around then that's on her. She has sensitivity in regard to inclusion. For example, she left our life360 group because she would get upset if people were hanging out and didn't invite her, like if we had a random spontaneous hangout.

I'm seriously struggling with my current friend group as we have been having a lot of issues and in the past, we had a similar issue that ended up with the person this friend didn't like being ostracized. Yes, I should've been smarter about communicating whether or not I could show up at her party, but the rest? I don’t know. Am I the asshole here? I'm willing to change and be better and change any negative behaviors but nobody else believes I'm overly absorbed in my boyfriend around the company of our friends. Even if I was, I'd not hesitate to change it and even proposed to bring him to less events. At the end of the day, I feel like I'm sacrificing something.

In retrospect I should've realized she wasn't looking for a compromise but was just setting a boundary, so no wonder she wasn't looking for anything collaborative but, still.. I don't think the results will end up well given her history with being upset due to missing out or jealousy. ): I do like her a lot but I feel like I'm at a loss here. She isn't a bad person and I enjoy hanging out with her but this just stings. I feel like an asshole partially for the first part but I kind of lost the plot once me getting lost in my bf came into the equation as I always make sure to delegate my time between everyone the best I can.. am I missing something here? I also don't understand her negative outlook on how he interacts with her- she always spoke so highly of him prior to now. It feels unfair and like I'm the only person she is focusing on when by her logic, she and some other friends would be doing the same thing as he and I are apparently..

EDIT: thank you everyone for the advice/comments!! I've been having a hard time evaluating my friendship with this person and this has been a bit of a wake up for me. It's hard but I think I'm starting to realize she must not have been my friend in the first place and even if she was, her tendencies have been hurting me without me even realizing it.. I'll be distancing myself from her but I want to try and talk things out with her a bit further and see if I can get a clearer image of what exactly is happening.. it hurts and I cried a lot about it but my other friends have been standing strong with me (: