Yearning For Someone

I fall for people easily. I have had so many crushes in my life, that I am sure I wouldn’t even be able to recall all of them. They were just someone in my life that I felt incredibly attracted to for a short period of time but if they had rejected me, it wouldn’t have hurt me much. I am not very skilled in the art of showing that I am attracted to someone in the first place. It just becomes really awkward when I try to get my crush’s attention and there is no doubt about that many probably have asked themselves what the heck the chubby goth chick was doing. And that is fine. But there was this one guy who I had a crush on for years. And the pain of knowing that I would never be able to be with him, haunted me for a long time during my adolescence.

Self-Confidence and a Change of Perspective

I have a sexblog and I present myself naked and in sexual positions quite openly. With that comes an assumption that I have self-confidence. Well, I don’t. I am just more okay with certain angles of myself than I am with others. For most of my life, I hated the way that I looked, and even felt like that my inner worth was quite useless. I know that it is a result of years of bullying, but it is still difficult to question those automatic thoughts that pop up about myself. While I am aware of them now, and where they come from, and that they are judgmental thoughts that can be questioned – I didn’t have that sort of awareness when I was younger.

When I was presented with opposing messages about myself, I always denied the positives ones and went with whatever negativity was thrown at me. It didn’t make sense that someone would hit on me when I had earlier heard that I am an ugly fat cow. This has led to some quite awkward conversations in recent years. People from my past tell me that they had had crushes on me, or had tried to hit on me. But I had laughed at them, hadn’t believe them, had thought they were trying to make fun of me. It is hard work to change your perception of your own past.

It has helped me to discuss these things with my Master. I realized that every time I actually tried to hit on someone, however odd I thought I behaved, I always succeeded. I didn’t end up with the best partners, but I have actually not been single since I was 12 years old. Apparently that is not something that most people experience? I am not saying that I was in love with all of those people, and I also have the ability to be in love, be attracted and have crushes on several people at a time (hello poly life!). But somehow it worked out for me when I tried, every time. Well, almost every time.

R – The Crush

There is this one guy who broke my heart. Not because he ended things with me, I get over break-ups pretty easily. Not because he rejected me in a nasty way. But because he never even saw me as a person of interest. He was outside of my realm of reach. If I’d guess how he saw me, it was probably just as the loud young gothgirl who still tried to find her place in the world.

That he never was nasty to me, didn’t help me much. Because if he had actually read the signs, and had rejected me, I would have been able to move on. But for years, I had a crush on this guy. I didn’t have high hopes, but there was this little spark of “maybe” that I couldn’t shake off. And it didn’t matter if I dated others, he was still on my mind all the time.

Let me tell you about R. I met him in highschool. He was two years my senior. I hung out with a group of alternative people at school. We were goths, metalheads, britpoppers, punks. We looked different, we were not mainstream. But we were the younger kids and the older alternative people looked a bit down on us, they saw us as “baby bats” (an actual term that elder goths use to describe those who are new to the scene. Elder goths is also a term we actually use. Yes, the goth subculture is weird.).

R was goth. He was the kind of goth guy that would easily catch my attention. He had black big Robert Smith-style hair. And he was skinny. He wore tight leather or PVC pants. He wore make up and always used black nailpolish. I was smitten the first time I saw him. My best friend at the time had an older brother who was in a band with R. So I often got the newest gossip from her. It is funny how I knew a lot about him, but he most likely didn’t know much more than my name and that I liked the same music as he did.

At school, I tried my best to be close to him. When he and his friends went out for a cigarette, so did I. When he was hanging out in the art room, so did I. It was not like I was stalking him. But when the opportunity presented itself to be where he was, I took it. Whenever he was close, I got really nervous, and I became silent. My heart was racing, I blushed and I couldn’t even look at him. I was basically an awkward teenage girl around him.

There were a few instances when I talked to him outside the school setting. And I really tried to seem interesting to him but it just never clicked for him. I really think he didn’t see me as a sexual being at all, because I was younger than him. He worked as a bicycle courier and I often saw him bike through town when I was on my way to my job or was out to meet friends. And a few times I saw him sit on a bench to have some lunch and a break. During those times, I dared to sit next to him, and talk to him. Can you imagine the courage I had to gather to do that? I was so nervous each time! I thought he was the coolest and most handsome guy on the planet, after all.

We clicked, for sure. And had a lot to talk about. We mostly stuck to the topic of music. But then, when he saw me at school, he just nodded at me, and didn’t really engage with me. His best friend, a big loud punk dude, thought that I was just an embarrassing baby bat and expressed his opinion quite openly. I will never forget one incident.

I was wearing high heels. And I am not very good at walking in heels but I was a teen, and I wanted to look cool! I was walking down the stairs, trying to look just that, cool. But I fell over and slid down the stairs on my butt. While my friends were asking if I was okay, R and his friend were just standing there, laughing at me. I didn’t go to school for two days after that. I was so embarrassed!

Today I might seem a bit nonchalant about my crush on R. I think it is the change in perspective. I can see why he wouldn’t have picked up on the signals I was sending, and also why he and I just weren’t a fit. But at the time, it hurt. I was angry at myself for not being able to bring across that I was interested in him romantically, and angry at him for either not reading the signals or reading them and not even having the decency to properly reject me.

But Today?

I didn’t lose those years. Because I was still dating. So I wasn’t single and saving myself for him. But I spent many nights crying, many days yearning, many years not being able to move on from my unrequited feelings for him.

I met him again a couple of years after I graduated from highschool, at university. He had lost most of his hair, looked tired and old, and not at all as attractive as I had remembered him to be. He was kind. We had lunch together, then coffee and then sat outside for a few cigarettes. I wonder if he then, at that moment, realized that I was a woman. He definitely treated me as an equal, and seemed respectful of my intellect, and even complimented my style. But for me, in that moment, the crush I had held on for such a long time, ended. I never saw him again after that.

I have been through a lot of heartbreak in my life. But I am lucky that I never had to experience the sort of unrequited love that makes it impossible to move on from. I had created this perfect image of him and with that, made him unavailable to myself. Because looking back, the signals I had been sending, might have just not been that obvious. I never told him how I felt, I never actually hit on him. And I think that one of the reasons for that was that I believed he was too good for me. And when the image of him got readjusted that moment years later, I was finally able to move on from the crush that had kept me captive through most of my teenage years.