A Crush

I met a girl across the sea
Her hair the gold that gold can be
Are you the teacher of the heart?
Yes, but not for thee

So I asked out Jenn.

I sup­pose it should­n’t come as a sur­prise; Jenn’s been — per­haps unwit­ting­ly — a source of quixot­ic inspi­ra­tion as of late.

It was some­thing I approached del­i­cate­ly, out of a sense of pro­pri­ety (if indeed, such a thing still exists), and the fact that Aaron and Karen are our close mutu­al friends. An avow­al of such a nature, han­dled incor­rect­ly, always has the poten­tial to be a cause of awk­ward­ness at par­ties.

Not that I was­n’t already awk­ward enough around her.

Jenn’s pres­ence alone would make me flus­tered. When I could speak, it would often be a flour­ish of non­sen­si­cal words. Something that’s humourous in hind­sight, but rather frus­trat­ing in the moment.

To be so affect­ed always took me by sur­prise.

I would tell myself, “This will pass. This is a phase, an infat­u­a­tion; time or luck will have me grow out of this.”

And it worked, for a while. I moved on, hav­ing con­vinced myself of such an idea, nev­er telling any­one how I felt. Then one day, I real­ized that I was only fool­ing myself. It became obvi­ous when I’d think of her in the lyrics of every song. I could­n’t pre­tend I did­n’t need to defend some part of myself from her. Until then, I nev­er believed in love at first sight. I did­n’t want to believe it. After all, how do you explain such an illog­i­cal, inef­fa­ble, irre­press­ible feel­ing? I grew, but not out of this, and in vain had I strug­gled.

She said no.

It’s fun­ny to think that with the wis­dom I’ve gained, the expe­ri­ences I’ve had, I can still be reduced to such an ado­les­cent emo­tion. I don’t think any­one, myself includ­ed, would have imag­ined this would hap­pen to me again, not at this age, not with what I’ve been through.

I just won­der now, when we’re both at Aaron and Karen’s wed­ding, after giv­ing me her polite dec­li­na­tion, whether I’ll still feel the same. Sometimes you think you’ve moved on. You think you’re over some­one, until you do some­thing as sim­ple as see them again and your heart stops. Love, attrac­tion, infat­u­a­tion, they’re nev­er so con­ven­tion­al as to be under­stood.

What a sil­ly thing a crush is.

2 comments

  1. Not more than a few weeks ago I found that the lady I had feel­ings for felt the same way, but noth­ing has come of it. She’s unwill­ing to com­mit due to the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance between us that that she has more urgent pri­or­i­ties in her life at the moment. Namely work.

    This is huge­ly sad­den­ing, know­ing there’s some­one so suit­ed and com­pa­ny so enjoy­able, but you sim­ply can­not have her.

    The whole thing came about after she read two of my blog entries that detail how I was pro­gres­sive­ly per­suad­ing myself to ignore the sit­u­a­tion and close of my feel­ings for her:

    Positive: http://www.craigknott.co.uk/?p=140
    Negative: http://www.craigknott.co.uk/?p=145

    I sym­pa­thise whole­heart­ed­ly.

  2. Hi Jeff.

    Since I’m men­tioned by name on this blog, and we have some mutu­al friends (includ­ing one who point­ed me here), I’d like to take this com­ment­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to clear some things up for your read­ers. First, I am involved with some­one. Second, if I don’t move to California with­in the next 5 to 6 weeks, I am mov­ing to Australia in November/December. I do have a lot of rea­sons for say­ing “no.”

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