Alright, get ready for a 2-4 year long story.
When I was a freshman in high school, I was very shy and reserved. After joining a bunch of extracurriculars sophomore year, I became determined to start branching out and befriending new people. I started talking to this girl that I used to be friends with when we were younger again, and through her I met all of the soccer team members who were in my grade. The girls opened up to me after a bit, and the guys were incredibly friendly almost right away, except for one. I was puzzled by this at first, but he's kind of nerdy and I noticed that most of his friends were guys, so I figured that he was shy around girls. I kept putting in effort to try to befriend him, and it eventually worked about halfway through our junior year of high school. Then, at some time in November of 2015, I realized that I had a crush on him.
I had had crushes in the past, but they were mostly sweet, subtle, innocent, and lasted maybe a month or two before fading. This one drove me completely insane. According to my friends, half of the time I talked about him I would start blushing and I found it very hard to look at him without feeling my face heat up. I didn't know how to handle these feelings, so I opened up to one of my friends about it. She told me that the fact that it was a secret was making it harder on me, so she suggested that I tell more people. I did this, and I ended up telling one of his guy friends and two of his close female friends in the process. After six months, it became much easier for me to hide and control my feelings. Over the next year and a half, there would be points in which I would think that I had finally moved on, but then I'd bump into him or something and feel jolts run up and down my arm.
I graduated high school a few days ago, and two of my friends think that it's impressive that I've liked him for this long for some reason. They tried to convince me that I should tell him how I feel at project graduation, since I'm not going to be seeing him again for a long time. I got to project graduation, contemplating whether or not I should say something, and then two girls I'm friends with who I didn't tell pulled me over to the tarot card table.
I thought to myself, "Okay fate, I'll humor you." I didn't tell the tarot card woman my question, but she managed to guess it and describe him almost perfectly in detail, which got my attention. Her advise was to follow my intuition, that I already knew the answer, and if I was to talk to him, it should be about the mixed signals he has been sending me.
(Mixed signals include ones that indicate that he likes me, such as the fact that I constantly caught him starring at me, the instances in which he would be standing very close to me, the times when I'd compliment him and he'd turn red while his friends teased him about me complimenting him, times when I'd be talking to him and he'd grin at one of his friends about something I said and they would grin back, the fact that he'd get embarrassed whenever I asked him to dance at Homecoming and Prom, and the low, flirty tone of voice he would use with me sometimes. They also include signals that indicate that he does not like me, such as his obliviousness to my obvious hints, him walking/bolting away from me whenever I approached him with makeup and a dress on, times when he would move away from me if I was standing close to him, and his general nonchalant attitude towards me all of the time.)
In the end, I decided to go with what my gut was saying and not to tell him. The ideal scenario would have been that I told him and he rejected me, leaving us both to move on as friends. However, I feared that he would say that he liked me, and then what? We start dating? I do like him a lot and it would have been a great way to continue spending time with him and his friends, but his friends that I told have warned me on quite a few occasions that he is unpredictable/weird and can have anger issues. I also don't want to have a boyfriend when college starts this fall.
I made my decision, and I technically could call him up and confess to him at any time, but I'm just curious as to what other people random people who do not know him or me think. Feel free to analyze the situation and say if you think I was right, what you would have done, etc.