It’s been a tiny bit over 7 months since my girlfriend of 9 years broke up with me. In that time, I’ve done my best to work on myself. I’ve learned what it means to be whole on my own—not reliant on another person to feel complete. It hasn’t always been easy. In fact, I would say that it mostly hasn’t been easy. But I made it. And I wanted to share the most encouraging development in this journey thus far with you: I think I have my very first crush since my ex left.
I don’t know if anything will happen with this girl. Though I would consider us friends, I would be pretty shocked if it evolved much past that. Even though I like her a lot, I sort of feel like…she’s out of my league? Maybe I’m just being insecure. She’s like, intimidatingly cute. Not in the sense that she’s unapproachable by any sense of the word—she’s SUPER approachable. I just think I’m intimidated by the prospect of non-reciprocity; she might not be interested in me the way I am interested in her; she might not even be looking to be involved with anyone at all; she might already be involved with somebody, and that fact has yet to come up in conversation. And I’m afraid that if I tell her how I feel about her, it’ll freak her out and screw up the friendship we’ve developed in such a short period of time. The list of unknowns that I should probably just simply ask her about are what intimidate me. But that’s all sort of adjacent to the point that I really want to focus on, here: I have a crush on a girl.
Just that fact alone is a very welcome reprieve from the exponential gravity that has been yanking at my soul for most of this year. It’s not even necessarily about this girl in specific, but the very idea that I am still capable of crushing at all that excites me so. Of course, that doesn’t lessen the fact that I have this huge, insurmountable crush on this specific girl right now, lol. But that sort of insurmountable is far better than the insurmountable dread I was feeling in January. So I’m going to try and allow myself to feel this crush without thinking about the implications too much. Because it feels good. It feels nice. It reminds me that I’m going to be okay—no, that I am okay.
And it reminds me that I actually mean that this time. I’m not just saying it to try and convince myself of it.
I have a crush. Oh boy, do I have a crush. Lol.