The Girl With the Crush (Girls Like Us)

From the moment I laid eyes on John*, I’ve been the girl with the crush. John was quiet and chubby and perpetually blushing. He liked Science and cars, and his parents owned a bakery. I liked him partly because he had this bright, kind, face and very, like, scared eyes — the kind you wanted to ease the fear out of. But I liked him mostly because he never said a single word to me. Not even a cough in my direction. To be fair, this may have been due in part to the fact that my obsession over him was very public information. I told every soul I encountered that I liked John. He was my Facebook password, the ever-present heart doodle on all of my notebooks, the name I inserted into Fearless era Taylor Swift songs. The whole ordeal of being forcibly associated with me for most of his young life must have been humiliating. But why didn’t I just give up? Between the baby Lakers fans, the emos, and the beyblade enthusiasts, there were definitely other options. Every Valentine’s day, a new random boy I’ve never seen or spoken to from a neighboring class would hand me expensive chocolate from the canteen. But the more he ignored me, the more fixated I became. I latched onto his every move, constantly attuned to what he liked and what he didn’t. I prepared immensely for the types of conversations we would have when we eventually began to have them. But that moment never seemed to come.

This would go on for five years. Sixth grade coincided with Facebook’s skyrocket to power, and so we started chatting online. Soon, we were talking in real life, too. All this led up to a historic chocolate handing on Valentine’s Day of sixth grade. But as I continued to receive everything I’d dreamed of since I was seven or eight, I noticed my crush on him fading. You could suggest that the dust was settling and there was no longer a need to be so intense about it, but that wasn’t the case. I felt nothing, no excitement over seeing him enter the classroom, no love for his face, no motivation to be exceptionally good at science. Soon after, I developed a crush on a friend who was in love with the prettiest girl in class. We would talk late into the night, as he built hearts with her initials on it out of Minecraft blocks. I spent graduation and the succeeding summer living in a Taylor Swift music video.

This story would go on to be a recurrent pattern throughout the rest of my life. I spent the next four years of high school deeply in love with William*, an artist who never liked me back to the extent I wanted to be liked back. He was untouchably talented, and even until now, easily the most attractive person I’ve ever known. We liked each other, but he didn’t want to date. He never showed affection and treated me like a colleague, especially in front of other people. But the difference is that when you’re older and the acne starts up and your boobs haven’t come in yet, the dominant feeling isn’t one of excitement, but rather of feeling just gravely unlikeable. I was no longer loud about it. I didn’t even want to speak his name most times. I couldn’t understand why someone I loved and admired so much didn’t feel the same way about me, and it couldn’t have been anyone else’s fault but mine.

On the last night of high school ever, everyone was gathered outside, singing old songs and watching the stars, but I was in bed crying my eyes out. The boy I loved was out there socializing, going from crowd to crowd, giving out shirts and mixtapes and all these little memories of the past four years. I wanted him to spend the last night of high school with me — me specifically. It almost felt like something he owed me, after being devoted to him for so long. And because it seemed to me that he was keeping this thing I so rightfully deserved just always slightly out of reach, I was miserable.

I only ever moved on from William when the ball was finally in my court. I transferred schools and started dating a nice boy from class who really liked me. But from where he was, it seemed like suddenly I wasn’t the one hung up on the what-ifs. Even if we never got together officially, the fact that he somehow felt the weight of my absence was enough for me to finally let go.

I would go on to meet more boys, one after the other, just constantly more and more boys (this is the natural sequence when boys are all you see and think about). And I would even get around to dating some — all of them nice and easy to be around and perfectly glad to have me be their girlfriend. But even in the happiest of moments, I felt like an imposter. There was always this urge to be single again, find a boy I like, and get them to like me back somehow — all the while revelling in the hurt and angst, retweeting sad 8bit fiction, singing lyrics to U2 songs. There were always new boys to like, new boys who didn’t like me, and new boys who might like me, after all. And so I ended things with each one, moved on to the next, and even to this day, every time I feel like it’s different with someone, it ends up exactly the same.

So the question still stands: why do I subject myself to this never-ending cycle of chasing and hurting and winning and leaving? The truth is that save for a few dark moments, I have never felt unloved by any of the boys I had been with seriously. Even the ones who were terrible to the rest of the world, were kind to me. And so I wish it were about finding someone better, but really it was about finding someone else. And I wish it were about how much I valued my freedom. But what freedom? On the first morning after a failed love, I feel the cycle start up again. It’s only a matter of time before I find someone new and become bound to his disposition, his likes and dislikes, his thoughts and feelings, who he wants and who he doesn’t.

I think the answer is that I take solace in being the girl with the crush, and in everything that that implies. Being the girl with the crush means that the boy I like is handsome and incredible and ever-unattainable. Being the girl with the crush means that I’m ever-unlikable, that I’m not-enough-this and really-just-that, and that he’ll never like me, not in a million years. Until he does — until the ever-unlikable girl finally pulls the ever-unattainable boy. It’s only in this final marriage of extremes that I’ll ever feel truly beautiful, desired, and happy.

Beyond that, I take solace in the familiarity of it all. Who am I if not the girl with the crush? My Instagram stories are almost always manufactured for a target audience of one. When I’m in an exclusive relationship, my Twitter is a wasteland. I hardly know myself outside of who I am when I’m trying to get a guy to like me. I don’t know what to write about, I don’t know what jokes to crack. I feel like it’s the only way I’ve ever been known.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with friends about “girls like us”. When breaching the topic of dateability (or undateability) with friends who have had their fair share of dating woes, the line of thinking is usually: “Guys just don’t want to date girls like us.” If before, my unlikeability was rooted in everything I was not, it’s recently also been about everything that I am. Girls like us who like to have a good time. Girls like us who know what we want. Girls like us who aren’t afraid to speak our minds. Girls like us who no guy ever takes seriously. Girls like us who guys won’t like back because we drink and smoke and party. There’s a comforting quality to these statements, especially when you’re 21 and you’re hot and smart and talented, and it’s their loss, not yours. They’re especially comforting for a girl like me, who feels like the heavens have finally sent her a good enough reason for why her lovelife has gone to shit.

But sometimes, I feel like I’m fighting imaginary haters. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but there always have been boys who liked me for who I was, and there always will be. There are boys and boys and more boys. Seeing how quickly the magic fades when my supposed one true love finally throws a bone in the direction of my insatiable desire to feel beautiful, what’s clear is it’s hardly the boy that matters at all. Ultimately, it’s just the way I see my own self. My worth, my beauty, my happiness — where I source these from, and what I use to build these up within me.

To the awe and amazement of absolutely no one, I’ve realized that my serial crushing has long been an excuse to not confront my own self esteem issues and insecurities. I haven’t learned to feel or be beautiful in other ways. I haven’t learned how to be okay with not everything being about being beautiful. And even after all of the boys I’ve claimed to love so deeply, I don’t think I’ve learned to be loving, either. I may have mastered the art of loving someone from a distance, but I’ve yet to scratch the surface of loving people from right here. More than anything, I haven’t learned to really live in the unfamiliar. Girl with the crush world is a dark, swirling vortex of sadness and rage, but at least it’s predictable. The real challenge lies in navigating steadiness and gentle words and hands that pull me in closer, and in figuring out who I am when there isn’t anyone left to be anything for. When it’s just me standing bare naked in front of the bathroom mirror, taking one look, and calling it a night.