Her
I'm 24 and sat down in front of my monitor on New Year's Eve to expound in excessive detail a multitude of inconsequential events to conjure a semblance of happening-ness in my life, primarily motivated by pangs of heartache totally unrelated to unrequited love, I reflect once again that I'm 24. Youth largely feels like it has passed me by, and access to the well-trodden path of conventional life choices remains elusive. I promise I'm not this miserable in real life - Djuna Barnes once said self-pity was the hallmark of a (not)great writer, and I'm doing my best to play along to allay any naive expectations beforehand.
Opening up here is a choice I've made subconsciously and chosen to follow through with, primarily for the purposes of my new year's resolution to concede agency as an overthinker to my intuition. Doing so offline would be something I'm interested in exploring but I've yet to establish a close enough relationship with anyone to do that over 24 years, a familiar suggestion of imperfections that eats away at me from time to time. I Consequentially, my fixation with crushes persisted beyond teenhood, a personal fallibility that simultaneously imposed unfair burdens on my figurative partner - one to validate my thoughts, ideals and place me inside peopledom, and another to validate my masculinity and my role as a protector. I intend to write about each of my crushes in time, just for the sake of posterity if nothing else. This particular post will be dedicated to my present crush - I've yet to grow away from her fully, and it was my feelings for her that served as inspiration for my current undertaking after all.
The bittersweetness that arises over an increasingly impossible crush affects me deeply - the distance between us increasingly palpable yet I remain unmoved, apprehensive about surrendering my attachment to the possibility of what has been seemingly never far removed from what could be. The process of letting go necessarily entails faithful reconstruction - relapse is the second step to recovery. I begin recollecting, starting with the first time we met. It's painful, but I have total recall. It was orientation day, and I'd approached a guy in the auditorium - I didn't know anyone there. We moved outside, and she came up to us and introduced herself to me, she'd known him already. We begin chatting, and we figure out we had a couple of classes in common and that we lived close to each other. Over the next month of so, I'd occasionally catch her walking back from class and we'd go back together, making painfully dry conversation. My total recall somehow fails me here, and I succeed in not having to relive cringe moments. I believe she regarded me as immature - I'm yet to build up evidence supporting a defense. I wasn't fully infatuated, but attraction built up over time. There was carnival day next week, and I built up the courage to ask her out to that with friends. She unexpectedly said yes, and we made it to the carnival.
[Quick note: this was written 8 months ago, and the pretentiousness a result of a vapid obsession with Bataille and Balzac. In retrospect, the prose is almost unrecognizable to me. My literary prowess has mostdefinitely declined, largely thanks to my neglect of it in favor of material pursuits(my rather fruitless pursuit of a better job). This feels alien to me - not even during my painful two years at cram school did I ever stop reading for this long. It's been eight months since I've started Inherent Vice!]
What followed was a remarkably disappointing day, as my friend wanton sabotaged my plans with her. He had no intentions with her, and his acts were merely out of what could be most generously interpreted as immaturity. A cockfight ensued. I was funnier, but he was pushier, which cancelled me out. There was no chance she ever saw me as cool or aloof, and that brought down my chances with her steeply, or so I thought. I would like to say I cut contact with this 'friend' after that, but he is almost a recurring character. Cutting off friends like him is akin to cutting off the heads of a Hydra - I slice one off, and two more appear. I take a pathological liking to the ones that walk all over me. Don't ask. Mommy issues.
I didn't see her after that day for about an year. We barely interacted online, but as I saw it my chances with her were truly dead and buried.
[Time skip]
I'd just returned from interning in the city over the summer, and she'd come back from hers. We both took the same courses - both of us were pretty tardy and there were only a few courses left to take by the time we got to it. She asked me to partner with her on a course project. This caught me off guard. How did she not know I had eyes for her? I agreed. She lived alone, far away from the rest of our class who lived relatively close to each other. The class pretty much ran its own housing association. Furthermore, I believe she was the only one who really reflected my always 'on' state - she seemed burned out and always 'on' too.
Idk I'm abandoning this. Sorry about the drastic ending and dropoff in quality of writing. It pains me to end this chapter (for now), but I cannot bring myself to type something I would not be willing to write on paper with vials of my own blood. Eight months was too long to drag this over , and I tend to get disinterested in the old muse when a new one walks into my life. Musical chairs of muses. Ha.