Why is it that I never seem to forget my crushes?

The ones I loved and lost (or more accurately, abandoned) are easy to lose sight of. There is some unequal bitterness, something that never recovered from the breakup or the fights or the jealousies and madness. It’s like some favourite dish I have finally eaten too much of and can no longer stomach another bite.

But my crushes, my sweet infatuations that never came to be, they are like exotic delicacies that I never got to taste. The hunger persists, after all these years. Such unbearable longing. Is it foolish, at my age? But what am I saying; I am not yet twenty-eight, though that threshold approaches rapidly. I have to keep reminding myself: I am not that old yet; I have still life to live.

Sometimes I feel like a long-distance dove, finally failing and falling, caught by the river rampaging across the lands I journey, finally crushed and ended. What is the cause of it all? What is the cost of it all?

The real reason for this faithful desire, of course, is the sheer impossibility of it. No chance of consummation. What can’t be fulfilled, can’t be dissolved. The dream, the fantasy holds. I will always want you. This perfect, stupid idea of you. I can’t have you, and this is the way it’s meant to be.

O but what if, O if only…