I spent most of my teenage years and the first bit of my twenties crush-hopping.
Secretly adoring your best friend.
Latching on to the idea of that one guy you met through your friend at a party two weeks ago.
Juggling a few mental relationships for a while until you pick one and pursue it.
Breaking up and starting over.
It felt like a bad cycle, a bunch of brain space that I was using for generally unrequited and meaningless crushes that, albeit fun and fulfilling at times, just didn’t deliver that much for me. Some of them turned into relationships. Some of them made me insecure and unsettled. Most of them seemed trivial and unimportant. But all of them stole my energy and, as I later found out, my sense of independence.
Independence isn’t something I generally lack, either. I started a business and moved to two new cities where I knew no one by myself this year. I’ve asked boyfriends to not sit by me in groups so we can make sure we’re spending enough time with our friends. I drive or fly to all over the country alone a dozen times a year. I just do things by myself.
But something about those incessant crushes, some more intense than others, changed me in little ways. At various points, I’d wonder if he was going to be at an event and almost change my mind about whether or not to go. I’d plink around on his Facebook pictures. I’d slowly gravitate toward music or films he talked about with me. I’d find reasons to talk to him. I’d find reasons to think about him. It was innocent, I’d say. Normal. Underlying. But ultimately it was a little life-sucking. And this year, it finally went away.
I dropped out and took a temporary job in Boston. I knew nobody. I was alone, in a new part of the country, with high-level work and a lot of social challenges. Every part of my brain space was spent remembering my bus number, which boss I needed to ask which question, how to talk to New Englanders, all the places I needed to see before I left, how to edit a text box in a new design program and the million names I learned in the first week.
And one day on the train it hit me:
I don’t have a crush on anyone. Not even almost. I go wherever I want, by myself, and do whatever I want, for however long. I can pour every bit of myself into my creative work. I hear my own thoughts. I stand in front of paintings at art museums for an hour. I explore streets just for the sake of walking down them. When I don’t want to go to an event, I don’t. When I want to meet new people, I do. It’s just me here. Just me in my own head.
And it felt damn good.
I know this singleness is one unique and temporary phase of my life, but I’m finally learning to enjoy it completely unattached. I can casually date, casually crush and freely be alone. Totally and happily alone.
Now that I’m back in Indiana and running into memories and old versions of myself, I’ve already poked my way around a few crushes in my head. But lately, they’re a lot easier to stop, or at least stay truly innocent and fairly non-intrusive. Pull out any cliché you want here, but when two people are “supposed” to be together, it happens. You want two humans who put forward real effort into knowing each other, not awkward teens who obsess over versions of each other in their minds.
Cheers to the end of the crush cycle.
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