The Sweetest Thing

One of the most difficult things about being newly single is the feeling of being alone again. Just when you get used to having someone to walk you home at night, to think about when you’re idly clicking around the internet at work, to text when you see something hilarious on the street you know he’d love… that person is suddenly absent. It feels like a death – someone you grew to depend on but just can’t (or shouldn’t) reach out to anymore.

Enter the crush. He is an island on my way to a continent. A lifeboat that will carry me to a yacht. A bodega around the corner from a Whole Foods.

The mutual attraction is there: it has been explicitly, albeit drunkenly, confessed on so many occasions and in so many ways. He is so lovely because he is so far away. None of the evils of real life can seep into this relationship and sour it because we are not a part of each other’s real lives. He tells me about work, I tell him about vacation. He teases me about being a New Yorker, I tease him right back for saying “hella.” Our communication is limited to the phone and Facebook, and our physical relationship has peaked at a hug, but somehow, after a bleak breakup, this tiny, insignificant crush gives me a little something to reach out to. And a little butterfly in the stomach never broke anyone.