crushed.
From a biological standpoint, crushes are fucking bonkers. There’s no way that natural selection allowed my ancestors to short circuit at the mere hint of attraction, yet here I am undergoing infatuation-induced organ failure. Far unlike any rational behavior, the onset of a crush is sudden, random, and mostly fatal. It feels like every interaction with a cutie is a game of dodgeball with feels, and my heart is a lousy athlete. The list of emotions, actions, and changes that follow could be rattled off as the side effects of a prescription drug. And, even if you might convince yourself, you never really make it out of one unscathed. It makes absolutely no sense.
There’s no explanation for why one look from just the right person can lead to my body rainbow-wheeling into oblivion. Literally one smile and my sweat glands attempt to single-handedly quench the thirst of an entire village. My vision becomes a video game display after the hero has been shot, blurring at the edges while the text You can’t sleep while enemies are nearby flashes menacingly. I get the shakes, the itches, the jitters, the hives, the numb tongue, the twitchy eyes — all of it. My body becomes Coachella, but the lineup is just every possible symptom of every possible illness that can ravage the human body.
The best way to describe a crush is as a psychological allergy. Yet for some reason, I constantly seek to place myself in scenarios with the allergen. Now, this might seem perfectly rational: Step 1: Attraction! Step 2: Increased contact! Then, bingo: Success!!
However, I also have a bonus step 1.5 where, without warning, I morph into Inspector fucking Clouseau. I traipse about like an absolute clown in locations where I might catch my new beloved, hoping to have another cardiac arrest upon sight. I blush in surprise after spotting a cutie walking out of a class, despite having been waiting outside in full anticipation. I sit in the back of a classroom and temporarily renounce my teacher’s pet status, willing to risk it all for one group project with someone who I know will obliterate my GPA the minute I get lost in their beautiful eyes.
While actively cosplaying as a court jester, I never even try to display the already meager evolutionary advantages I have. I lose anything that could render me charming in my normal state. Instead, I take on the demeanor of a lost child frantically searching for their mother in a Walmart. My smile starts to look like a Dali clock, and my laughter becomes the textbook definition of Uncanny Valley. I look at my crush, and my mind retains nothing but fight or flight. All words lose meaning, syllables backflipping off my tongue with abandon, vowels morphing into macabre guttural gurgles.
No positive feelings, be it joy, hope, or even contentedness, have ever flooded through my body during interactions with a crush. If they have, they’ve definitely been overpowered by the nausea. But if you were to ask me, I’d take decades of sweat and stutters and tears over not having a crush at all.
I agree that every moment I spend being engulfed by the intensity of attraction feels like someone has flung my lungs into a dumpster fire. Yet, it calls my attention to the shortness of my breath, the beating of my heart, the tensing of my muscles. Those are always the moments I’ve felt the most alive. The sweetest days are those when I allow myself the simple luxury of thinking about those who may not think of me. Too often, I judge my life and behavior as if I’m a simulation with no variance, denying the fickle and ephemeral nature of my emotions, yet I’ve never regretted the times when I’ve let my heart drive me somewhere stupid. And every time I catch a crush, I feel like it might be my last big one. Even if it isn’t, I’ll never feel the same way as I do right now.
So, honestly, fuck it. Crushes are fun.
