Walking across the Drill Field one afternoon, you find yourself consumed in thought. You’re not thinking about the big test you just took, nor are you concerned about the one you have to battle in an hour. Your brain is focused on someone. It’s that person who has every quality you’ve ever sought, that perfect person, The One.
You stop walking for a moment and gaze around, hoping that if you look intently enough, you’ll see your true love walking to class. You’re convinced that your magnificent beauty will cross your path and you, as clumsy as you are, will accidentally bump into him or her. You’ll apologize a thousand times while trying to hide the redness that decorates your face, yet still glancing nervously in an attempt to find one more thing you can fall in love with.
When he or she speaks, you nearly melt. Every intense emotion devours your body and it begins: the beam. For the rest of the day you’re face shines, and everyone around you begins to notice.
This pattern repeats itself until one day when you learn that your true love is unattainable. Enter the heartbreak.
Perhaps you find out that you are simply not the right type, or maybe your perfect lover isn’t interested in being serious right now. In the worst case, your true love has a true love of his or her own.
You’ve just experienced the best and worst of the heart’s number one enemy, The Crush.
It’s not just for high school students, although it can make you feel like you’re back in Coach Johnson’s health class, pretending to stare out the window while secretly gawking at the Homecoming queen or the pitcher of the baseball team.
The Crush is the most manipulative and deceitful of all human emotions. The Crush builds hope, a hope so strong you actually feel as though you and the object of your affection have a genuine connection. You automatically raise this person above all others, telling yourself you would do anything to attain their attention, which only makes you frighteningly vulnerable.
The power we give our crushes over our lives is unacceptable.
We should never allow anyone to have so much control over our overall happiness. We should never revolve our entire lives around one person, especially when their feelings toward us are entirely ambiguous.
I wish I could say that there is a foolproof method to avoid the Crush, but unfortunately there is not. I think we all succumb to the Crush at least once in our lives, and most of us learn not to allow those feelings to overtake us more than once; however, there are some people who fall victim to the Crush in repetitive cycles. They go from crush to crush, falling into total infatuation with one person after the next, convincing themselves that there is no one else. They never seem to realize that they could be missing out on someone who truly could bring happiness into their lives because they’re too busy chasing the people that make them miserable.
Don’t fall head-over-heels and subject yourself to falling on your face. Seek the possibility of a relationship, but do not go looking for total perfection in anyone. You’ll only end up hurting in the end.
Michael Robert is a sophomore studying mathematics. He can be contacted at [email protected].