Unrequited Crushes

For the past few weeks, I've had an unrequited crush on someone. I don't want to give away too many revealing details about who he is, because then he might find my blog and recognize himself and OH DEAR GOD, THAT JUST CANNOT HAPPEN BECAUSE IF HE FINDS MY BLOG HE'LL THINK I'M EVEN WEIRDER THAN HE (AND EVERYONE ELSE) ALREADY DOES.

I will say that he's funny, smart, nice, cute, and easy to talk to. He's also only gotten on my nerves on three separate occasions, which is at least fifty-seven times less than the average person. He's someone I've known for a while. I never really thought about him like THAT before. But we were talking one day and for some reason I suddenly saw him in a new light, and I recognized all those good qualities that he had. I found myself thinking about him...a LOT, even more than I think about coffee, books, and the reasons why the average person bugs me. If that's not a crush, then what is?

He's the first person I've had a crush on in a long time. It's also the first time in years that I've had a crush on someone who I didn't meet on an online dating site first. The last time I had a crush on a guy that I didn't meet online was about five years ago, when I started socializing with other people my age at my church. We used to go out to dinner together, and there was a guy who was good-looking, friendly, and genuinely kind to everyone. AND he went to Mass every Sunday! What was not to like?

Unfortunately, that guy didn't like me back. He liked another girl who went out to dinner with us, someone who was at least fifteen pounds thinner than me and actually knew how to put on makeup and walk in heels without falling over. I never told him how I felt. I doubted that it would even matter to him.

I haven't told this new guy how I feel either because a) he's planning to move away soon; b) if he liked me, I think he probably would have asked me out by now, because he's not the shy type; c) based on certain things he's told me, there's someone else that he's thinking of right now. It feels like what happened with that other crush all over again.

At first I thought I only liked this new guy because of all the online dating profiles where guys specified that they were looking for women who "look like Natalie Portman, but I'll settle for someone who looks like Scarlett Johansson" and the guys who indicated that they didn't want to date women who weighed more than the guys' weight limit (I am not making this up). I thought I only liked him because of all the dates I'd gone on with the wrong guys. I thought maybe I liked him because I was lonely. But the more that I thought about him, the more I realized that I liked him because of HIM.

I'm embarrassed to admit that once I realized I had a crush on him, I immediately thought of all the reasons he would never like me. I'm not thin enough. I'm too neurotic, too much of a workaholic, and I want to start carrying around a whoopee cushion that I can use against people who bug me. One reason I view myself in this way is that when I was growing up, there were people who constantly made me feel like I wasn't good enough. There are still people who make me feel that, and sometimes it's hard not believe them. I know that they're wrong, but...

It's just a crush. It'll go away eventually. And maybe the next time I have a crush on someone, he'll actually like me back. And he'll NEVER make me feel like I'm not good enough. He'll also come with me to buy whoopee cushions.

What about you? Have you ever had an unrequited crush on anyone? How did you deal with it?

This video doesn't have anything to do with unrequited crushes, but it does make me feel better about not being in a relationship. It also makes me like Kerry Washington and Jay Pharoah even more.