The secret crush

Sucks ass big time.

There is nothing so annoying and futile as having romantic feelings for someone and not being able or willing to tell them about it. It's such an enormous waste of time and energy. Trying to inadvertently maneuver your way into that person's life is not only degrading but makes you feel rather pathetic. If it's not a close friend it becomes even more difficult, because then you have to try and think of ways to see and spend time with this person without it seeming strange or odd. In my neurotic youth, not that I'm no longer neurotic, I'm just neurotic in a different way, I engaged in silly activities such as walking by the boy's apartment building, shopping in his bankrupt store just so I could get in his good graces, or hanging around places where I knew he might appear just in case he would show up, like a mutual acquaintance's house. As if I had nothing better to do with my time. I'd rearrange my whole day and blow off other people just for the mere chance that he might turn up and accidentally end up spending time with me. And once I did see him I'd act all aloof and casual, not to mention weird, since I needed to appear completely oblivious to him yet available and interesting enough for him to stick around. I needed to make it seem like I just happened to be there because I was passing by on my way someplace else and was just killing time.
If I was him I sure wouldn't find past me attractive. A chubby, round faced girl with frizzy unruly hair, large glasses and old lady clothes with huge shoulder pads. I used to wear my mom's and my aunts' old clothes. It was so bad that even my father reacted. For instance, I took to wearing this large, baby pink winter jacket that went almost to the knees, worn by one of my aunts back in the 80's. My father had to react that time and asked me: "Is that the kind of thing girls your age normally wear?!"
My personality wasn't much to write home about either. I was unbelievably shy and didn't say that much and when I did my nerves got in the way so much that I'd end up sounding cocky, surly and weird instead. Sometimes I'd even stutter. Sometimes I wouldn't even make any sense.
I was simply unattractive to the opposite sex. I was a seemingly sexless who lived inside her head, still do to some extent I suppose. But beneath the surface I was yearning for love and affection. Not sex. The only male I'd give myself to in those days was Elvis, had he been alive. No, I just wanted romance. And I went looking for it in the oddest places where I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting what I wanted. I think I only became interested in those who were either taken or were virtual strangers because it was safer that way. I could go on nurturing the perfect fantasy of how love was inside my head. Like Rosie O'Donnell said to Meg Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle": "You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie!" That still holds some truth.
I've had those secret crushes since then too, as an adult, where I wasn't supposed to. They're like a drug. They feel great while you're around him but lousy at all other times, particularly when you wake up and smell the coffee and realize that it was all in your head, for the most part anyway. They haven't all been unrequited, but they've all been basically impossible. The one time I think I came close to the crush becoming reality, I chickened out and made another choice.
So, the all-consuming secret crush really sucks.