Crushing It
Freedom. Finally.
For about as long as I can remember, I had crushes. Tommy Meyer was one of the first. Then there was Everett, Bob, Jeff, Steve, Robert. All through grade school, then high school, there was always some boy I was thoroughly smitten with.
Some were functional crushes — the boys in grade school, for instance. I didn’t much like school and having a crush made getting to school a lot more doable.
I never did anything about the crushes; I kept them to myself. I just quietly fed them with my vivid imagination. When I was in first grade, I couldn’t imagine anything better than being alone with the object of my affection, kissing in a dark closet.
Or my prince would rescue me, just like Cinderella, the fairy tale that I most resonated with.
When I got into my early teens, there developed a desperation around these crushes. There was always some sort of ache that went with them.
Years ago, I read a book about how a woman changes when she marries: she enters the archetype of the married woman. There’s one line from that book that is etched into my memory.
“He swept me off my knees.”
That was me. Desperate. No humiliation too severe. Fortunately, most of this longing to be with the love object just played out in my imagination.
Kind of like a Carson McCullers story: I was never in love with the ones who were in love with me. If I liked Jim, his affection was for Brenda, who pined for Ricky, who was hot for … you get it.
In high school, I liked the bad boys, the ones who were older. I stopped liking the boys at school because they were too familiar. What fed my love sickness was the mysterious; if I knew too much about him, his family, that just didn’t work.
I was always on the lookout for the next demigod. That is the status I’d elevate him to.
With him, all of my hardships would dissolve, all of my desires would be satisfied. I would be fulfilled.
Until I learned more about him. Until the next one came along.
Nothing cures an old one like a new one, I used to say.
I imagined being married, happily married.
When I did get married, the crushes didn’t go away. But I kept myself in check. Pretty much.
This madness, this love sickness, was my way of life for years.
Perimenopause was the first glimmering of relief from this craziness. I noticed that it actually gave me a choice. I could go down this path with this new guy. Or not.
Though I’d coined it and said it for years, I finally realized that:
Being in love just means you don’t have enough information.
And I realized that everything that I’d ever accomplished, I’d done as a single woman: I worked from the time I was 15, saved my money, and at 17 moved from Astoria, Oregon, to New York City. I landed a job within the first week, and later, my own apartment.
As a single mom, I was graduated from college, the first in my family. With honors.
I’d retired the debt of a bad marriage. I had stupidly cosigned, literally and figuratively, to his financial imprudence. I knew that even if I was awarded child support, I wouldn’t get it — he was simply incapable.
And the $25,000 debt we had, over and above the mortgages, over and above the property tax that was in arrears, back in the 1980s, during the Reagan years and 22% interest — I took it on. It took me three years and everything I owned to pay it back, but I did it. Coincidental with college graduation.
So even though those accomplishments gave me satisfaction, there was still this desperation around men.
And what happened when I got the man? All, every one of my “relationships” was really a painful dismantling of the illusion that I had built up around him. I have never remained friends with any of my former lovers. But then, we weren’t really friends to begin with.
When I went from perimenopause to full on menopause, it was instant, like switching off a light.
“What was I thinking?” And “What was I thinking?” I truly marveled over and over.
I had been delivered.
And though I would have denied it up until it happened, I realized that the lovesickness was probably hormones.
What else could explain it?
