#11: A crush is the fantasy of attention
So much happens during a crush, almost like a rewiring of the brain, that makes them so fun to observe
I’m a slow thinker, and an even slower writer. I thought I was never going to send out this newsletter on time, but here we are! In case you missed it, I’m trying this new thing where I send out three letters every week: an interview series on Mondays (read the first one here, featuring Avi), essays and other stories on Wednesdays, and a recommendation list on Fridays.
Today, I wanted to write about crushes. I find this emotion, or this condition, so deeply fascinating that I doubt this will be my last piece on the matter. So much happens during a crush, almost like a rewiring of the brain, that makes them so fun to observe (though less fun to experience, that’s for sure). I hope this makes sense.
Thank you so much for reading!
Have you ever had a text message change your life? One second you’re calm and confident, the next you’re ball of nervous energy stripped of any sense of self? I was out at a party with a friend when one of those texts landed on my phone. It came out of nowhere, catching me at a tipping point I didn’t even realize I was standing on. The muscles on my face contorted into a smile so freakishly wide that, when Audi asked what the fuck was going on, there was no believable way to lie.
The truth is that — idk, maybe it’s not even that interesting, but — I suddenly found myself with a big fat crush on my lap and in that moment, everything I have ever known about myself dissolved into thin air.
Months before this text, during one of those dusty 3pm Jakarta lulls, I had the feeling that life had gotten a little too plain for my liking. Things weren’t necessarily going so well with my life, they were just… predictable. Just a little too flat. And so in that moment, bored and unserious, I whispered a wish to the universe… that I would please like to be shown the way to a crush. I’d missed being occupied by something intense. I wanted to feel. I’d missed the out-of-body experience that comes with having a crush. I wanted to go on a ride, baby!
And so that ride arrived.
Know that as I write this very paragraph, Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” is blasting from the speakers. If there was a song that could perfectly soundtrack the arrival of this feeling in my life and my departure from sanity land, it was this. Make no mistake, I’m not Taylor singing about having a long list of lovers. I’m the person Taylor is singing to. I am who she’s referring to when she says “I know you love the game”, or when she says “boys only want love when it’s torture”. I am “you”. I am “boys”. Eagerly waiting to be left breathless, to see if the high was going to be worth the pain, my name imprinted on that blank space.
In a recent piece, Heather Havrilesky of the famous advice column Ask Polly beckoned on readers to “pay attention to how you feel” in the presence of a partner as a way of gauging whether or not things were truly good. “Love shouldn’t feel bad”, she says. While a crush is hardly a relationship, or even “love”, the suggestion is valid and applicable. I knew I was fucked the moment I became fully aware of this crush because I immediately felt defeated. So much so that when I called Avi the next day to report this new information I’d discovered about myself, I was crying so much that she thought I was about to inform her of some terminal illness.
“What is going on?? You’re making me scared,” she said, visibly concerned. Any attempt to collect myself was useless. The words wouldn’t come. I remember feeling too embarrassed. Not the cute “shy” kind, but the “shameful” kind. I was ashamed because the crush had made me feel so awful, so unworthy. The crush had triggered the worst of my thoughts about myself, and unlocked the kind of shame I knew better than to feel. I resisted verbalizing my crush out of fear that the admission would grant it too much power over me.
After a few minutes of fumbling, I forced it out of me and whispered “I have a crush”. The words tasted sour on my lips, like I might actually like the idea despite the ugly crying face I was making. I can’t recall what Avi’s specific response was, but I remember her laughing — relieved that I wasn’t dying — before telling me “you should write about this someday” (today is that day).
Most musings on crushes describe the experience as a temporary shift in focus, or a distraction, from the things that should otherwise be getting our attention (i.e. work, our hobbies, our life), to this person and this person alone. If my gaze were a camera, instead of documenting the details of my life, I was now constantly pointed on this other person, watching their every move, hyperfocused on their every detail… the marks on their face, the way their smile starts from left to right, the way their eyes twinkled when they laughed, or how awkwardly they wave their hands around when they speak.
In the case of my recent crush though, I realized that I hadn’t temporarily shifted focus to this other person as much as I was suddenly using him as a lens through which to look at myself. It wasn’t his eyes I was thinking about, but rather the right way to move, the perfect thing to do or say if he were to turn and look in my general direction.
When you live alone, with no one watching your every move, it’s easy to slip into a habit of performing your days on bare-minimum mode. I could sleep all day and no one would bat an eye. I could forget to do the laundry for two weeks and no one would tell me to do otherwise. Eat breakfast for dinner to no resistance. There is so much freedom from having no one witness how you live your days (so much so that, admittedly, it is easy to believe you’re living you’re best life when some days that may not be the case). Now, powered by this crush and the illusion of being constantly perceived, I often found myself striving to be on my best behavior. The idea of my crush watching would get me out of bed and make me put on an outfit I loved. I was suddenly living life at hardcore mode and crushing it. I was the best performance of myself — at least on good days.
On most other days, though, the more I entertained the fantasy of his gaze, the more critical I became of myself. All of a sudden it was less about being excited to start the day and more about how I wasn’t enough. When I tell a friend he’s cute, I was really wondering if I, too, was cute to him. Me saying “he’s hot” was really me telling myself (with rather unnecessary harshness) that I didn’t consider myself hot — I suddenly hated my body. Descriptions of his character was really about me wondering if my character would be good enough for him. The more I thought about this person, the more I thought about all the ways I was… not up to par? I held the both of us up under the light, to compare, and decided he was precious stone and I was whatever would be leagues below. The louder I sang him praises, the louder my self-doubt reverberated.
In the days before my crush, free from the gaze of this random man I had chosen to use to judge myself, I’d gotten very good at not just resisting but actively not believing these funky thoughts. I’d been on a journey to free myself from the chains of societal norms that told me look down on myself. I was learning a gentler, kinder language to process my existence. I was getting better at believing in myself. The messy corners of my life? I could chalk them up to… charm — or edge, I don’t know. Under my fantasy of his POV, though, they were questionable piles of stuff that would be a burden to eventually deal with.
I wouldn’t say I’ve sobered up from this delusion. It’s just I’ve had enough distance from that night I got the text that made me smile to now be more level headed when the thought of my crush lands on my mind on a random afternoon. Absolutely nothing has happened since, other than the occasional overanalyzing of completely neutral, completely uncoded moments. I still swing back and forth between enjoying the illusion of my independence and confidence and the idea of myself as an undeserving mess under the microscope of his (completely imagined) gaze. But! I’ve also sat long enough with this crush for it to stop holding so much power over me. While order hasn’t completely been restored, I think it’s getting there.
“You should make a move,” friends tell me. “Fuck around and find out!”
I resist, because I don’t know how to, but also because a part of me is afraid to find out he was never looking in the first place.