Mushy Gushy Crush Stuff

It's reached the stage of the crush where I'm scouring the internet for photos. His MySpace pics are blurry, he's always looking down, or away.

I'm finding it quite odd. Looking at pictures of him, I'm struck by the fact that physically, he isn't particularly my type, at all. In fact, quite opposite to my usual long-haired girly-boy tastes. One of my friends, who knows him IRL described him as being "really rugged and manly."

But that's the thing about internet crushes, isn't it? You build up an idea in your head of what a person is like, based on their personna, their posts, their words, their actions. And based on all this, I have decided that he is beautiful because he's kind, because he's thoughtful, because he's clever, because he's humble and gracious and gentle, and a host of other reasons that seem terribly shallow when I try to list them.

I suppose this is the kind of crush where you admire in the other person what you wish to be more like in yourself. Which is odd, because so much of our online interactions have been FITE-ing. Mostly playful, but sometimes quite fierce. But when it mattered, when a bunch of people were ganging up on me on account of something I believed in very strongly, he always seemed to be on my side. I really liked that, that "you got my back" feeling. But I didn't entirely realise until the infamous sex dreams, just how much of that play-FITE was pigtail pulling and repressed sexuality, well, at least on my side. That desire to get in someone's face, to annoy them - it doesn't always mean you hate them, does it? ;-)

It's bad, though. My obsessive aspects are always put into overdrive by the attraction process to the point where I think it's less to do with like or lust and more to do with OCD. I give the person way too much power over me. Yes, the power to make me feel good, to make me feel high and happy and amazing, that "sun is shining, sky is blue, world is a good place" feeling where you sit all day writing songs about them. But also the power to feel terrible, to feel small and awful and unworthy - not even with a harsh word, but just with the feeling that they are ignoring you.

It's been like this as long as I can remember. Being attracted to someone almost invariably makes me feel like absolute and complete shit. It opens a trapdoor beneath my feet and drops me down the ladder into my deepest insecurities. I just have to remind myself, don't I - that I don't stand a chance. I am old. I am overweight. I am not conventionally attractive. I am bad tempered and moody and anti-social. A 200 lb manic depressive is the punchline to a terrible joke, not a dream date. How dare I even presume! He'd be shocked, appalled, horrified if he thought for a minute that my half-joking banter was not actually joking at all. In fact, probably terrified that I have started to think about him as much as I do.

But then again, all those little details that the internet glosses over. I know almost nothing about him. I don't even know how he lives, don't know any of the mechanics of his life offline. Hell, I don't actually even know if he has a girlfriend or not. It's that crush facility shading in the details for me and the internet sharpens that glossy focus into a mirror like sheen that only reflects back what you want to see.

Having a crush on someone on the internet adds a layer of distance, an emotional shield. Yes, you can get hurt, and the emotions are real, but not as real as someone you see IRL all the time. Not as completely safe and hermetically sealed off as a celebrity crush (though curse those celebrities that use the internet to come crashing through the fourth wall) but still. It's real, but it's not real enough. It's protected, but it's not protected enough. That weird quasi-real land halfway between make believe and a somehow truer reality.