the map village street editors

“That’s why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they’d call them something else.” Sixteen Candles.

She sees him across the room at a party. Her pulse quickens and she urgently tries to look nonchalant. He walks over. She blushes obviously, stumbling on her words. She searches over his shoulder, afraid to look at his eyes, of revealing the clandestine truth; the bittersweet yet indisputable gaze of fallen-in-loved-ness; the Crush. Given its squashy-sounding name, a crush is generally viewed as a constricting rather than liberating affliction. Like a red-coloured elastic band growing tighter across your torso as the condition deepens, a gaping crimson chest wound, only to be healed by the confirmation of requital from the object of your admiration. Is a crush a joyous or dismal experience? Let’s deconstruct the lingo. 

Classifying terms of infatuation is a well-researched science it seems, with dictionaries offering varying definitions for the many shades of devotedness. The official definition of a crush indicates that the experience is mostly negative and riddled with disappointment. 

While the word ‘crush’ has the connotation of a lack of genuine feeling, it is slightly fairer and more pure-of-heart than its younger sibling, ‘puppy love’ which reeks of one-sided-ness.  The more grown-up of the three emotions is ‘limerence’; a more hardcore version of a crush, and usually lasting for a longer duration, even a lifetime.  Whichever name you assign your amore, the experience tends to encompass a rollercoaster of emotions; intense euphoria tinged with bleak despair and analysis. When quizzed, my friends said their experiences with crushes were “more like crashes”, generally ending in tears. The consensus was that crushes tended to be either a fleeting phenomenon that quickly faded or, if taken up, the crush didn’t live up to its fairytale-like expectations. 

C says, “Maybe it’s different for girls, but for me, it’s a feeling of disempowerment. I equate crushes with misery. You want so badly to talk to her… to ask her out…to kiss her…but you do nothing. You just daydream sadly about it and never have the guts to do anything. Then you see her holding hands with some other guy who was brave enough to do what you wanted to do for so long and you feel like the biggest loser ever. It sucks.” 

K says, “I had a crush on someone for ages. Then I found out he had a crush on me too. We hooked up one night. It was terrible. Sometimes it’s better not to realise the crush. The fantasy is the best part.” 

V says, “When you have a crush, you hide your feelings for that person; well, you think you are hiding it, but anyone around with a little intuition will have picked up on your body language. So you go on wondering if they feel the same way, nah they wouldn’t feel the same about me, or maybe they do, nah, he is way too wonderful for me, I’m batting above my average, but didn’t he look into my eyes longingly today? Nah you were imagining it, or were you? So now you can’t think straight and that person has become a really good friend and you can’t risk the friendship. So you continue to think about how to tell them how you feel, what about a letter, that’s a little teenager-ish, I could ask them out to dinner, but you’re such good friends you already do that, what about just going up and kissing them, now that would require a shitload of courage, nothing a small bottle of whiskey beforehand wouldn’t sort out, nah you don’t want to be drunk, you want this to be a special moment and you keep wracking your brain about how to let them know that you have an almighty crush on them.” 

Oh the agony! Life definitely seems more interesting with a crush or two sprinkled throughout. Imagine life sans that feeling of excitement when he or she walks into the room; the butterflies when you hear his or her name mentioned; the stolen glances when you think he or she isn’t looking. I would definitely miss the fun of running the gamut of heady sentiments that goes along with having a crush. It may be a heavy cross to bear, but it’s an oh-so-sweet one.