unrequited crushes

on change & letting things go

last week, C asked me: how have you changed? i interpreted it as: how much have you changed since you moved to new york four years ago?

i moved to the city after having spent four full years on the golden coast. as college graduation approached, i started feeling less and less like myself. on a whim i decided, the unfamiliar can’t possibly worse than what i already did know. so i moved without much thought or plan. a reckless decision that proved to be the best one i have made thus far.

on the surface, it feels like so much has changed. i have lived in seven different apartments. colored my hair twice. career transitioned. lived through a pandemic. but deep down, i feel more or less the same. or at least, i still feel the same way about most things. that i still hate exercising, but i run a few times a week anyways because i know it is good for me. that i refuse to believe people can change. that the most important thing in life is agency.

but there is something in me that did change a little. for the longest time i used to take everything so personally. every rejection, failure, and especially every unrequited crush. but having lived enough and clutching deep into the belief that everything happens for a reason, i am able to look at every unrequited crush, and do an elaborate post-mortem.

that by not choosing me, they have saved me from eventual heartbreak and alternate realities i would not want for myself. from a life where week long vacations are the main thing to look forward to (something that clashes from my core desire as mine is to build a life where i wouldn’t have to routinely take a vacation from). from a life where the paths feel fixed and another where i would not experience an equal partnership.

at twenty-six, i have traded relentless curiosity for understanding. i no longer ask why this person did not choose me. for now i know that the fact they didn’t in itself is enough to show that they are not enough for you.

i used to think how much you wanted something revealed how right it was for you. but we might not always know what is right for us, especially not in the moment. so much crap happens, so much crap that only makes sense with time and in retrospect.

now i am able to desire things without needing them to work out. for i believe that if things did not work out, i have been saved from something that i may not fathom in the moment.

but at the same time, i can no longer long for anything the same way i did when i was seventeen, and then again at twenty-one. or maybe for now, how much i want something might not be an indicator of how right something is for me, but rather how much i actually want it?