In Defence of Unrequited Love

The pain of unrequited love – the bone-deep agony of becoming totally, madly, desperately infatuated with someone who doesn’t feel the same way – is so distinct that it hardly needs to be described. In many ways, it seems like the bedrock of the human existence; at any rate, we’d have far fewer Adele albums without it. To live a life devoid of one-sided crushes and hopeless infatuations seems more than empty; it seems completely inhuman. And yet, for several years, this is exactly what I did. As a pre-teen, I had enough schoolgirl crushes to form a Waterloo Road sub-plot. I was always a slightly daydreamy child, and even when I was with my friends in body, my mind was usually elsewhere – fantasising about such glamorous lovers’ trysts as a kiss in the rain outside the leisure centre or a furtive glance across the aisle on the coach to Basildon for the M11 league. My schoolbooks would come home covered in the initials of an interchangeable brown-haired swimmer (and the occasional coach…), and I am told that my mock-heroic love poem The knight in shining speedos is still hanging at the back of Miss Shah’s classroom. In short, I had experience of romance long before I met my first boyfriend and learned that kissing in the rain behind the leisure centre is slightly less romantic when you’re interrupted by his mum pulling up in her Honda Civic to ask if you want a lift home. But the truth is, my capacity for crushes didn’t die a sudden, essay-worthy death; it simply began to dwindle over time. As I started to battle with body dysmorphia and low self-esteem, the excitement of working out who I liked was replaced with the nagging fear that no one would ever like me. And so, whenever I found someone who did, that was enough – I never knew whether I had any interest in the boys I was seeing, because I never really asked. They liked me – and such an act of charity was surely enough to warrant my affections in return. In this way, I became more and more alienated from all the feelings of lust, love, desire and infatuation that should colour your teenage years. The sense of vitality and excitement was gone; in its place was a feeling of numbness that led to a series of uncomfortable, even traumatic encounters – how could I say that it wasn’t what I wanted, when I wasn’t even sure what I did want in the first place? Over time, the word “want” stopped entering into the equation. I didn’t have desires of my own anymore – the only thing I needed was the validation of being wanted; no matter who by. I’ve said before on this page that loving yourself is a process, so I won’t pretend that those feelings disappeared overnight. Even now, I work hard every day to hold myself back from the brink of those same patterns. I don’t think recovery is ever a finished state, but I strive to fall in love with myself a little bit more with each passing day. And whilst I’m far from done with this process, I think it’s beginning to work. In the last few months, I’ve encountered feelings I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. At the end of the summer term, gazing at an older student across the College bar, I suddenly got the kind of giddy, giggling headrush that used to be reserved for brown-haired boys in swimming pools. I told my friends about my new crush with the pride and sense of momentousness that others might use for the birth of a child. But for me, the significance of this occasion was similarly huge. Each flirtatious encounter with a handsome stranger that leaves me giggling to myself long after he’s left the room is a sign of life and of renewal – of what has changed in me, yes, but also of what has remained. And as I’ve come further in my journey towards healing, I have had more and more of these experiences. Some things don’t change, of course. There is still no feeling worse than the emptiness of going home at night without the much longed-for sign of affection from your new crush. And any weapon that could replicate the pain of the words “I just don’t see you that way” would bring mutually assured destruction to its knees. Now, though, I don’t take these experiences for granted; at their best or at their worst. The emotional vertigo of a crush hovering over the waterfall of unrequited love is one of those rich cocktails of feelings that reminds me how wonderfully, brutally and painfully alive I really am. Each clumsy interaction, clammy palm and treacherous blush proves once and for all that my heart – though it may be battered – is not broken; and I’ll live to fall hopelessly in love with many more wildly unsuitable men. So, if you’re reading this whilst anxiously checking your phone for a response to a text you’re afraid you should never have sent; if you’re agonising over which dress will finallydraw him across the room to talk to you; if you’re torturing yourself with pictures of his prettiest female friends in between mouthfuls of Ben and Jerry’s - hold on to that feeling. Embrace the giddiness, the excitement, the fervour and desperation. Because it could all be gone tomorrow.