Nobody loves me. This I know for sure. Well yeah, my family loves me. My friends love me, too. My friend Beth would tell me that Jesus loves me. I'm not talking about that. You know what I'm talking about: passionate love, what the ancient Greeks called Eros. The kind of love that makes you nervous and excited, calm and peaceful all at once. I'm talking about the balls-out-Barry-White-screaming-thigh-sweats kind of love.
Of this variety, I have none. But I still need that nervous excitement?those feelings of anticipation. And for someone like me, that pull is immense, I mean it. That butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling is like crack, like heroin. I cannot resist. (And I'm a total sucker for a happy ending, as you may know from my previous column, \A New Year's resolution we can all keep."") I know a lot of you can relate.
It all goes back to the seventh grade. I saw this chubby 13-year-old boy across the playground. He had spiked hair, dimples and wore black-rimmed glasses. He could play the intro to Tom Petty's ""Free Falling"" on the guitar, and got straight As. I was instantly smitten, and told my friend Sarah that ""we belong together."" She laughed at me, but I was insistent.
Unfortunately, he also laughed at me. Did this deter me? Hell no. Y'all know me better. Instead of giving up, I spent my free time devising ways to ""bump"" into him. I sat next to him at football games and did my best to ignore him?a ploy that now, as a somewhat smarter 26-year-old woman, embarrasses and disgusts the hell out of me. At night I would play ""Open Arms"" by Journey over and over (and over) and cry, luxuriating in the sweet pain that was, and always will be, a junior high crush. It was intoxicating.
In high school, I saw ""When Harry Met Sally."" And in college, I saw ""Sleepless in Seattle,"" ""Notting Hill,"" ""Never Been Kissed,"" ""You've Got Mail"" and a host of other sappy romantic comedies which extolled the virtues of unrequited love. The whole idea was to be in love with someone who didn't love you back. That was the fun.
Some fun, you might say. Yes, crushes can be brutal. I mean, this is why it's called a crush, no? If they weren't tortuous, they'd be called something else. But there was something so undeniably appealing about the chase, especially at that age. Ahh, to be 13 and ""in like"" again. To be listening in on the conversation when Sarah Milewski told my physical education pickleball partner that I not only liked him, but ""liked him liked him."" (I could do without the 30-plus seconds of stunned silence that ensued following the revelation, however.)
Lately, though, this unrequited thing just isn't as attractive as it once seemed. I'm getting older, I guess. More mature. And hey, I'm a graduate student. I don't have time to listen to a single song 65 times. Nor do I want to do that. And you know, I don't really feel bad about it. Maybe that time, that pre-teen haze, was just a period of figuring out how to really be in love with someone. How to get that immature crap out of my system, all in preparation for the real thing. Now that's a feeling I can't wait to have.