Crushing

I was just a kid when I developed my first crush, but developed is totally the wrong word—crushes don’t develop, they appear, fully-formed and incomprehensible. I still get them, crushes, and I’ve found that I absolutely adore being in crush with someone. My last one hit me a few years ago and hasn’t subsided just yet.

Looking back over the history of my crushes, I’m trying to find the pattern, figure out what makes me fall in crush with someone. It’s clear that I’m a sucker for swimming pool eyes. You know the ones—they’re not just blue, they’re azure or turquoise, maybe with a touch of grey. They’re the eyes that make you want to dive in and drown, usually appearing to be several thousand lifetimes deep. Three of my crushes had those eyes, and there’s no telling how many laps I swam in those six eyes, how much time I spent floating on my back inside those irises.

I also get intellectual crushes and fall in love with minds. I size up every room I’m in, not based on money, clout, or influence, but intelligence. I try to figure out who’s smarter than me and talk to them, in hopes of learning something new or gaining a fresh perspective. The right blend of smarts and words knocks me to my fucking knees, and if someone is capable of belter banter—the really quick, sharp, scathing exchange of insults and pithy phrases is food for my soul—I’m a goner.

Who were these crushes? A boy in school, a couple of my undergraduate professors, and a chef. All except the first included that soul-sustaining banter. Nothing untoward ever happened in any of these crushes; the most that developed was friendship and creative inspiration. Another common denominator in my crushes is that I write more and better when I have a crush.

One of these crushes came along into my life roughly fifteen years into my marriage. My husband good naturedly teases me about my crush, and most importantly, gives me a safe, comfortable space where I can talk about it.

That’s right—I told my husband about my crush. Immediately. He’s my best friend, and I tell him everything. And here’s the thing—our love life had just about completely evaporated when the crush happened. We had also just moved into our forever home, and my crush was the spark needed to bring this fire back to life. We’re doing a great job of tending that fire, it’s been steadily burning for the past several years, and sometimes, it’s white-hot.

Here’s the other thing—I’m not a kid or an infatuated undergrad these days, and I’ve developed an understanding of and respect for crushes. You have to keep yourself grounded and firmly understand and believe that crushes don’t become relationships, aren’t supposed to (except for those rare mutual crushes). They’re what-ifs, not if-onlies, and they can be good for you—make you put more thought into your appearance, help you discover parts of yourself you’d forgotten about, inspire you to be creative, and most importantly, they give joy.

But you can’t will a crush into existence, can’t manufacture one in your life. If you could, I wouldn’t have gone twenty years between crushes. When you find yourself in crush with someone, enjoy it without expectations. And there’s the real value in having a crush—it lets you remember how to live in the moment, whatever the moment may be, and that’s what life is—a series of moments that define us, bring us joy, rip our hearts alive and beating out of our chests and into the garbage, or set us on fire sprinkled into the suffocating mundane existence we call life.

Kendall Defoe