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.

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.