Analysis of a crush
Jan. 29th, 2017 22:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillA particular subject has worn a groove into my brain. That subject is hayeswise.
Crushes of any kind are largely uninteresting to most people who aren't directly involved, the exception being very close friends who love gossip (mostly women) and matchmakers (also women). The monomania associated with crushes makes them somewhat repetitive by nature, and it's hard not to get bored after the fifth round of preoccupied sighing.
Unfortunately, the one audience one always has is oneself, which means that no matter how bored I get by the preoccupied sighs, I'm still stuck here. This not being a romantic crush, I don't have the advantage of my brain having turned to goo, which might make me notice it less. Instead, I get all the restlessness, anxiety, and constant re-examining of everything both of us do while simultaneously rolling my eyes at myself. My sighs are generally from exasperation that all of the interstices of my day, all the little moments when nothing else is happening or when I'm switching gears, are stuffed with some thought about him; the awareness of him permeates my days like smoke. There isn't a lot I can do about it, so I sigh, roll my eyes, and wait for it to wear off.
It is wearing off, at least somewhat. Last week I was being driven absolutely up the wall by lack of contact -- the longer it's been since I saw him, the less sure I get about exactly what my attraction to him actually is, and without more memories of how we interact to fall back on, the lack of data alone is enough to make me nuts. That there's something there is indisputable: very few people can occupy my mind like this. But what, and what to do about it, and how to impress upon him that I want more time with him to figure it out without seeming like a creeper... that had me spinning in circles for at least a week.
Yesterday I got to see him at last, as we walked around Clayton, ostensibly farming while walking his dog (Teddy) but actually talking a great deal, glyphing when we remembered to, and chatting with the other agents we ran into. Five minutes clarified a great deal, as I expected it would; by the end of about ninety minutes, I was on somewhat surer footing. With regard to how I feel about him, at any rate -- how he feels about me is apparently not as clear as I thought it was, based on a couple of his reactions. I don't know him well, and my people-reading skills are good, but I'm not a mind-reader.
Today, though, I'm a bit calmer, and more speculative than frantic. I'm still going in circles, as I still need more data, but I have enough to chew on for a little while. I saw enough to confirm that there's no animal magnetism at work (thank god, otherwise I'd be totally unable to think straight) and no obvious physical attraction, though he's quite pleasant to look at. He makes me happy, and I enjoy our conversation enormously. I was bemused to realize that I felt quite warmly toward him by the end of things -- deep affection like I have for very few other people, all of them old friends or lovers. He has my loyalty, which on the one hand was something that I often offered to crushes, but this has none of the "I must make myself useful/appealing to this person" impulse I used to get. He has it because I like him a lot and I trust him implicitly, which is also unusual. Particularly given how much of an unknown he is.
He also takes away a great deal of pain when I'm near him, which adds to my enjoyment and gives me more energy. I did tell him that -- after describing CFS as, essentially, the debilitating weakness you get after surgery, which he immediately seemed to grasp -- and his reaction was a bit unexpected. I thought I had mentioned to him that I have chronic pain, but he was puzzled when I told him that I hurt less around him; I had to explain that I'm always in pain, but that it's less so when he's around, and that's one reason I'm always happy to see him. He had started a glyph, and he was looking down at his phone when he murmured he didn't know what he was doing, so I had to ask whether he meant the glyphing. He said no, taking the pain away. I told him casually that some people are just like that, and the conversation drifted away again... but he seemed quite touched by that admission, which I hadn't expected. Humbled, perhaps. I'm accustomed to curiosity, or perhaps bemusement, when I tell someone a thing like that, but I don't expect them to essentially hide their face in shy confusion. He was taken aback, but pleased, I think, that he could help me out like that, even if he didn't understand quite how. I took that as a positive sign, and his attitude toward me didn't seem to change afterward, remaining as open as ever.
I may have misread him... when I told him at Barrelista that I thought he was a cool dude and I'd like to see him more often, he gave me a look that I had interpreted as wariness, trying to calculate what subtext there might be in my statement and whether I was trying to get my foot in the door for something more. It may simply have been that he had never had anyone say something like that to him, and he was trying to figure out how to respond. I tend to assume that the cool people I meet are accustomed to being sought after, and have developed the kind of distancing reflexes that celebrities do -- but I need to remember that some of them are geeks who don't have that sort of history, and still have a little trouble assimilating the notion that other people think they're interesting and fun to be with. It may come into play even more now that I have some charisma of my own, and thus may qualify as "cool people" myself.
He's been busy, and at least now I can feel fairly confident that what keeps him silent is not that he's avoiding me but that his life intrudes. He said that he had gotten to the point where he couldn't keep up with his email lately, which is a sign of overwhelm among most tech-oriented people. So that little nagging voice can be squelched, at any rate.
If I'm right about his reaction to being told that he's good company, I could probably compliment him until he sank right through the floor, which is an amusing notion but will probably never be anything but a mock-threat. At least that would mean that he's not aloof or cautious, and that perhaps I don't need to handle him quite so carefully; if he was wary because of emotional scars, that could be tricky to navigate around.
I suspect that some of my immediate affinity for him is because his energy is very compatible with mine. The way to find out for sure is to touch him, but I'm torn; it would be a way to test my theory, but it may stir a hunger that, at the moment, is still pretty abstract. If I actually come into contact with an energy which is comforting and comfortable I may end up half-desperate for it, which could be awkward. It's been a while.
Time will tell. I still think about him a lot, but a little less obsessively than before, and as things progress I might actually be alone again in my head for whole hours at a time.
Crushes of any kind are largely uninteresting to most people who aren't directly involved, the exception being very close friends who love gossip (mostly women) and matchmakers (also women). The monomania associated with crushes makes them somewhat repetitive by nature, and it's hard not to get bored after the fifth round of preoccupied sighing.
Unfortunately, the one audience one always has is oneself, which means that no matter how bored I get by the preoccupied sighs, I'm still stuck here. This not being a romantic crush, I don't have the advantage of my brain having turned to goo, which might make me notice it less. Instead, I get all the restlessness, anxiety, and constant re-examining of everything both of us do while simultaneously rolling my eyes at myself. My sighs are generally from exasperation that all of the interstices of my day, all the little moments when nothing else is happening or when I'm switching gears, are stuffed with some thought about him; the awareness of him permeates my days like smoke. There isn't a lot I can do about it, so I sigh, roll my eyes, and wait for it to wear off.
It is wearing off, at least somewhat. Last week I was being driven absolutely up the wall by lack of contact -- the longer it's been since I saw him, the less sure I get about exactly what my attraction to him actually is, and without more memories of how we interact to fall back on, the lack of data alone is enough to make me nuts. That there's something there is indisputable: very few people can occupy my mind like this. But what, and what to do about it, and how to impress upon him that I want more time with him to figure it out without seeming like a creeper... that had me spinning in circles for at least a week.
Yesterday I got to see him at last, as we walked around Clayton, ostensibly farming while walking his dog (Teddy) but actually talking a great deal, glyphing when we remembered to, and chatting with the other agents we ran into. Five minutes clarified a great deal, as I expected it would; by the end of about ninety minutes, I was on somewhat surer footing. With regard to how I feel about him, at any rate -- how he feels about me is apparently not as clear as I thought it was, based on a couple of his reactions. I don't know him well, and my people-reading skills are good, but I'm not a mind-reader.
Today, though, I'm a bit calmer, and more speculative than frantic. I'm still going in circles, as I still need more data, but I have enough to chew on for a little while. I saw enough to confirm that there's no animal magnetism at work (thank god, otherwise I'd be totally unable to think straight) and no obvious physical attraction, though he's quite pleasant to look at. He makes me happy, and I enjoy our conversation enormously. I was bemused to realize that I felt quite warmly toward him by the end of things -- deep affection like I have for very few other people, all of them old friends or lovers. He has my loyalty, which on the one hand was something that I often offered to crushes, but this has none of the "I must make myself useful/appealing to this person" impulse I used to get. He has it because I like him a lot and I trust him implicitly, which is also unusual. Particularly given how much of an unknown he is.
He also takes away a great deal of pain when I'm near him, which adds to my enjoyment and gives me more energy. I did tell him that -- after describing CFS as, essentially, the debilitating weakness you get after surgery, which he immediately seemed to grasp -- and his reaction was a bit unexpected. I thought I had mentioned to him that I have chronic pain, but he was puzzled when I told him that I hurt less around him; I had to explain that I'm always in pain, but that it's less so when he's around, and that's one reason I'm always happy to see him. He had started a glyph, and he was looking down at his phone when he murmured he didn't know what he was doing, so I had to ask whether he meant the glyphing. He said no, taking the pain away. I told him casually that some people are just like that, and the conversation drifted away again... but he seemed quite touched by that admission, which I hadn't expected. Humbled, perhaps. I'm accustomed to curiosity, or perhaps bemusement, when I tell someone a thing like that, but I don't expect them to essentially hide their face in shy confusion. He was taken aback, but pleased, I think, that he could help me out like that, even if he didn't understand quite how. I took that as a positive sign, and his attitude toward me didn't seem to change afterward, remaining as open as ever.
I may have misread him... when I told him at Barrelista that I thought he was a cool dude and I'd like to see him more often, he gave me a look that I had interpreted as wariness, trying to calculate what subtext there might be in my statement and whether I was trying to get my foot in the door for something more. It may simply have been that he had never had anyone say something like that to him, and he was trying to figure out how to respond. I tend to assume that the cool people I meet are accustomed to being sought after, and have developed the kind of distancing reflexes that celebrities do -- but I need to remember that some of them are geeks who don't have that sort of history, and still have a little trouble assimilating the notion that other people think they're interesting and fun to be with. It may come into play even more now that I have some charisma of my own, and thus may qualify as "cool people" myself.
He's been busy, and at least now I can feel fairly confident that what keeps him silent is not that he's avoiding me but that his life intrudes. He said that he had gotten to the point where he couldn't keep up with his email lately, which is a sign of overwhelm among most tech-oriented people. So that little nagging voice can be squelched, at any rate.
If I'm right about his reaction to being told that he's good company, I could probably compliment him until he sank right through the floor, which is an amusing notion but will probably never be anything but a mock-threat. At least that would mean that he's not aloof or cautious, and that perhaps I don't need to handle him quite so carefully; if he was wary because of emotional scars, that could be tricky to navigate around.
I suspect that some of my immediate affinity for him is because his energy is very compatible with mine. The way to find out for sure is to touch him, but I'm torn; it would be a way to test my theory, but it may stir a hunger that, at the moment, is still pretty abstract. If I actually come into contact with an energy which is comforting and comfortable I may end up half-desperate for it, which could be awkward. It's been a while.
Time will tell. I still think about him a lot, but a little less obsessively than before, and as things progress I might actually be alone again in my head for whole hours at a time.
