(noun, informal) an infatuation
I’m always fascinated by why I should have a crush on some guy and not another. Why one guy should make my heart beat harder and excitement build and yet another does nothing. When I was in high school I had two major three-year crushes. Crush is probably the wrong word. When I was older and wiser I described them more as ‘consuming obsessions,’ which is a more appropriate description. These two guys were similar kind of people. Tall, thin, sandy coloured hair, play basketball, in the popular group but slight outsiders, pretty nice guys. The kind of people I wanted to be. I wasted a lot of time and mental energy on these crushes and planned it would never happen so obsessively again.
And I’m happy to say it hasn’t. Crushes since have been less intense, shorter and more rational. They have also been a wider variety of people. Still nice guys, still slightly on the outside of things perhaps, but less a special type. Some were short, larger then thin, non-athletic, dark hair etc. etc. The craziest crush I had was on a guy over the internet. I chatted to him on msn a few times, saw his good looking picture and found out he lived nearish and wallah it happened. Other then the net crush, the common thread of my later crushes was they were people I was in close physical proximity to (ie house mates, uni class mates) but not close to relationally. My high school crushes were far, far away people to the extent that in my mind they possibly weren’t real people, just ideas I created. Maybe your wondering what the point of putting this all down on my blog is? Well it’s mainly so I can look at in 20 years time and think what a stupid screwed up young adult I was.
So, anyway, this brings me to my latest ‘crush’ and I’ve put apostrophes there because calling it a crush in the same sense as my earlier ones is untrue. I guess I feel my later crushes were realer (or maybe better diagnosed) in the sense that my emotions were very honest about what I wanted from these people.
My latest crush involved a guy a few years younger then me who lives in the house I moved into for my new job. Physically there was nothing to really attract me to him. (EDIT: this is actually not true, he is one of those people that is nothing special, but with star crossed ideas looks pretty good). Average height, tad overweight, okay looking. Him being a nice guy was probably his biggest attraction. He was nice in a needy way if that makes sense. The first night I was there he was friendly, helpful, interested and concerned as I settled into my new room. Young adult men, who I don’t know aren’t usually like that to me. So I guess it endeared him to me. Then there was that old tragic faviourite: “Maybe he’s gay or same-sex-attracted at the least.’ The signs were there. Gayish sounding voice, lots of female friends and interactions and fewer male of each, him cleaning the kitchen by himself in an attempt to get away from people who don’t understand or at least it could have been. But I suppose he was just a neat freak. I doubt he is SSA now. Probably in part because I don’t desperately desire him to be so he isn’t. The crush kinda weirded me out cause even though we live in the same house he often worked or was out at nights and I worked during the day so I really didn’t see him much at all. Probably my feelings were the usual type of stuff: wanting to be liked, accepted by a guy. Another element in my later crushes, and this one, was what I call wanting to be a man, or more crudely wanting to be needed as a man. This guy needed some sort of help and direction. He said he was a Christian and some of his life agreed with this and some of it didn’t and I guess I felt drawn to want to be a man in his life and lead him to a better place with God.
I wonder how it might have been different if I hadn’t had re-sexualised my SSA through porn and masturbation in the couple of months before going there. Maybe I could have been some help; maybe I wouldn’t have had a crush on him. maybe the crush would have exposed me to new parts of dirt underneath, maybe I would have made a friend. He’s almost moved now and the past week I talked to him once when he told me how to pay the rent and that’s about it. But there was some weird stuff happening in me over him. I was angry at him for not needing/wanting me. And I wanted to be mildly annoying to get back at him for not needing me and making noise when I was trying to sleep because it showed he wasn’t thinking about me and caring about me.
Maybe you’re thinking “man this guy is screwed up.” Well it’s true. But this is me being honest about my screwedupness. There comes a point in many relationships or crushes where I realise the high hopes that I had of the other person were somewhere on the scale between unrealistic or –worse- irrational. And being a wise young man (slight sarcasm) I always knew I wanted more then I should, more than could have ever been given. But it took a while for it to sink in in this case. It took a while for me to go and say “no I will not place my hope in a fallen human being to satisfy deeply felt pain. (side note: obviously healing in part comes from fallen human beings, I’m not denying that.) A few Mondays ago I cried and let go of this irrational and selfish desire that this guy could fill a hole in my emotions. When I say I let go I still thought about him, still felt nervous when I heard his voice, the heart still quickened and I still desired friendship and to be a man in his life, and I still hurt when I felt slighted . But I didn’t demand these things anymore. My emotions and happiness was not as dependent on him coming through for me. I seriously felt freedom in letting go.
May this be the last time I be so stupid and fall so hard in infatuation. Hopefully in 20 years time I can read this and laugh and cry at a screwed up 21-year-old in the summer of ’06-07. I wish this guy all the best. Hopefully I’ll see him in heaven because we both made it.
persevering all the way 