...reminiscing...

Interestingly enough, I have spent the better part of the evening thinking about what it means to "crush" on someone. Someone asked, and this is my answer I suppose, in all it's convolutedness. The topic certainly is no stranger to me, as everyone who knows me is well aware. I crush constantly, and move from one to the next with utter seamlessness. It means close to the same thing to me now as it did when I was 12, or 15 but these days I act differently in its presence. I think to best explain my views, I will give a brief retrospective:

When I was 12 I was walking up the stairs to my class and saw Johnny A., the noble 9th grader, at his locker. He turned to his friends Peter K and Nik D. and flashed the most gorgeous smile. A decade later, I still remember that smile. It completely did me in and I spent the next year and a half thinking about him; about him on the volleyball team, playing soccer with the guys at recess, and that afternoon of magic, the only day he ever spoke to me. He was walking past me on his way home from school and I was working on a project on clown fish on the playground - he stopped, and asked me about them. I told him about this wondrous fish that works in harmony with the anemone to trap and poison bigger fish, securing food for them both. "Harmony", he said, "I like that". And again that smile, as he walked away. Two days later I was walking down the steps in my house when the most terrible thought hit me: I was never, not ever, going to be with Johnny. He just would never be interested. I sat right where I was in the middle of the stairs and started crying; my first heartbreak¹.

People have asked me before who my first crush was, and generally I tend to give Peter K. as my answer, Johnny's best friend. I think the reason for that is my definition of crush as something innocent and fun, brief and inherently unrealistic. Peko was cute, fun and had a wicked slapshot. It was a thrill to think about him, run into him in the halls, and talk about him to Amanda at recess. I have had many of these brief nothing crushes in my time - 10th grade was Temmy, 13th was Salar, and this year was.. well, we'll leave that one there. Needless to say it is as torturous, thrilling, unrealistic and silly as a "crush" should be.

For some reason I was never able to think of Johnny as a "crush". It really feels to me almost dismissive of what I felt, which may not have been Love in capital letters, but came close I think. My crush on Peko was almost funny, and even then I could recognize it. It's like all the times this week I have unloaded to Claire about my current "crush" - I was on the border of hysterical laughter. I could never laugh about Johnny. How he made me feel was the most serious, the most real and true thing for me, the single most important thing in my life then. The next time I would feel that way wouldn't come for 8 years, when on a strange rainy night after work last year, I went out for my friend Morgan's goodbye party and fell instead into the most consuming relationship I've ever had. What I felt inside was so similar to how I had felt as a frizzy-haired awkward 12 year old, but the experience was completely different. There was no crying on the stairs this time around. After I realized that the conversation I thought had taken place over 20 minutes, half hour at the maximum, was really held over nearly three hours I had the funniest feeling of inevitability and calm. The first night I wasn't calm actually - I went home and woke Janet up to tell her that I met someone who would probably change my life. I called my mother the next morning to tell her the same thing, and to prepare her for the fact that he was a decade older than I was. But after that ridiculous night and day, I was so calm and just waited. It took three months before we finally committed, but we got there eventually. And for better or worse, it did change great parts of my life, and how I lived it. I think the reason I was so calm was that I was absolutely certain we were going to be together. It's funny because my good friend Stephanie had a crush on him at the time, but I was never worried, even though I have always thought her prettier, funnier and brighter than I, because it didn't change the certainty that I felt. For this reason, then, I never think of what happened with him as a "crush" either, though for Steph I know a crush was what it was. And actually, that night I lifted my eyes briefly and glanced over to the bar, where Steph was gazing back at me. I felt then, and I feel now, that she knew it too.

The other night I told the friend who inspired this introspection that a crush implies you would be with this person if you could; he countered that no, it implies you would *want* to be with this person if you could. He got it right I think. I don't think a crush is a proper crush unless an element of impossibility and unrequitability is there. That's what makes it fun, because you can enjoy it and delve completely into it without sacrificing any crucial part of yourself. And more importantly without tiring yourself out. Just take me as an example - if I took every "crush" I have to heart, and invested myself into it, well frankly I wouldn't get anything done. Not that I've been getting anything done this week... *sigh*. Anyways. I think that was my answer. Did it makes any sense?


1. One night in the 11th grade I was at my friend Shay's house having dinner and flipping through her high school yearbook (we had been friends our whole life, but she was at another high school). I think I knew but didn't fully register that Johnny had gone after middle school to Shay's high school. We were laughing at Shay's club pictures and stupid haircut, when I turned the page and saw Johnny's picture looking back at me under the heading "In Memorium". He had been killed at the end of the previous year by a drunk driver. I started crying right there, and poor Shay had no idea what was wrong with me. Heartbreak #2. It still pulls at my insides, even now, thinking about it.