An Ode to Crushes

by Elizabeth Moore

“I just want to have a crush on someone,” I bemoaned to a friend. 

Because we all know that crushes give us something to live for. 

Without a crush, you are simply yourself. Your hair is neither blonde nor brown. You are of average proportions. You can appear hot in the right lighting but mostly you are a solid 7, sitting at home, hand-washing cups, and going for silly little walks. 

Without a crush, life is beige: entirely liveable and aesthetically neutral. Beige is stable. Beige doesn’t cause emotional upheaval. Beige draws no attention to itself. You can get by on beige for so long and no one will ask questions. 

Sometimes, all I want in life is beige. Beige on beige on beige. I want no one’s attention, no one’s questions. I want to do puzzles in my bathrobe and meticulously sew buttons onto cardigans. 

Beige keeps me hydrated. Beige keeps my blood alcohol content at a manageable level. My liver and kidneys are so healthy thanks to beige. 

But there are days—dare I say SEASONS—where BEIGE. IS. BORING. Where I want to throw lime green and hot pink paint on the walls and cover myself in glitter and run widdershins through my apartment to FEEL SOMETHING. In fact, this morning I woke up and threw open the window and screamed into the ether WHY SO MUCH BEIGE?? 

It’s in these times of crippling existential crisis where I think of my younger self—fuzzy journal cradled in her lap, purple gel pen tucked behind her ear, slippered feet propped upon the neon florals of her comforter, chin tilted upward to better ponder the tulle butterflies thumbtacked to her ceiling. She had it all. Not a speck of beige in sight. 

She was an exotic woman of possibility, where any day might bring something new—someone new—into her life that would add a new dimension to her already iridescent world. 

In middle school, I had a crush on the same boy for two years and had three conversations with him, tops. In seventh grade, we were paired together as lab partners and it was the best week of my life. Once (once!) we attended the same non-school-related event and made 0.5 seconds of eye contact and I was a total goner. 

In high school and college, I cycled through crushes every few weeks. It was a total blast and kept me super busy—1) calculating where they would be and when, 2) manipulating how I would be there too, 3) fantasizing about all the ways I would impress them. And of course I converted absolutely NONE of these fantasies into proactivity, but I was nonetheless thrilled to let these meteoric feelings color so much of my world. 

Even now, certain songs, locations, and articles of clothing can bring these delightfully achy feelings back, like light touches on a bruise. Speak Now by Taylor Swift, the Sonic Drive-Thru, that one hat I always used to wear backwards. 

I don’t know about you, but my crushes seem to be fewer and farther between these days. Something about getting older. *SNORE* And don’t get me wrong, I pride myself on the maturity and stability I’ve built into my almost-thirty-year-old life. But there are days where I look into the mirror and whisper formidably to myself: you are too young to be living amongst so much beige.

So here I am, penning a note of gratitude to our crushes old and new, near and far. 

Dear Crushes,

Thank you for turning our heads by effortlessly existing. 

Thank you for painting our walls with the bright colors of your presence. 

Thank you for keeping us in complete and total agony. We wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 

Thank you for being close enough to look at but not touch, for this perfectly calculated distance taught us to be master storytellers, concocting entire love sagas out of one moment of connection.

Best Wishes,

The girl who sat behind you in choir practice 

All jokes aside, this is what I wish for your summer, my friends. A little more color and a little less beige. A little more hawt and a little less hurt. A little more wild and a little less tame. 

Because when you have a crush, you begin to hope. You begin to see yourself as brave, as someone who is in the league. You begin to coax yourself to the edges of your longing, to rewrite the boring details of your beige life and wonder how they could be different. 

I can’t put my finger on it, but something tells me this is your summer, your season to step out of the beige—I can feel it. 

I’ll go first.

“Hi hello, it’s me, Elizabeth from choir practice, just popping in to let you know that my mind and heart have been fixated on you for a month. Do you remember when I told you a joke last week about a spoon? Well I do and you laughed and I thought about it for days so anyway let me know if you’re interested in falling in love sometime.”