What is a crush? Is it the initial phase of romantic or physical attraction? You know, the butterflies in your stomach, constantly checking your phone, can’t stop obsessing period the first few weeks or months of knowing someone.
A crush can sometimes spark a relationship, but it often doesn’t. It peeters out and you find a new fixation, you confess your feelings and they don’t like you back, or you stay friends/colleagues/ volleyball co-captains. Is it a feeling unrequited? You take it to your grave or …of course he knows dummy, we all know… not gonna happen. Crush is a word of possibility. It can be thrilling, playful, illuminating, embarrassing, disappointing, heartbreaking.
I was describing a character in my novel to a friend and I said she has a crush. His ears perked up at the word and asked me, “What’s the deal with women and crushes?” He flung his hands eagerly to the side, physically punctuating the point.
“What do you mean?” I barked back.
“The other day I heard a woman I work with in her fifties, mother, grown kids, say the word crush.”
My friend, in my opinion, was not being impolite. He just thought crushes were a girl thing. Like two-in-one shampoo is a boy thing. When pressed on it, he said, “The word implies an overwhelming feeling. We are mammals and share genetic history. Maybe CRUSH involves the complicated definition of what love between two people means.” Mr. Man has clearly had his fair share of crushes.
Crushing is instinctive, bodily, human. Of course I’ve had crushes, too. From different eras, ages, and zip codes. The other night on the couch my partner and I were going down musical memory lane and we sang the lyrics to a Mumford and Sons song at the same time. I flushed at the silliness of it, the excitement mixed with nervousness. It felt like vulnerability and connection. That is one definition of crush.
There are other crushes too; hurried, messy, leaving tender spots on the heart that never fully heal. Richard Siken captures it stunningly in his book of poems Crush.
Since it is the month of love I have to ask.
Do you remember your first crush? Do you remember your last?
With gratitude,
Cooper <3
love this, cooper!! and i LOOOOVE crushes <3 i think they brings so much life, madness, energy, possibility--an incredible opportunity to clarify one's life desires and an opportunity to offer someone witness. as i like to say, FLIRTING SAVES LIVES!