I love having a crush. I’ve had countless crushes over the years – on the guy working the checkout at my local Coles, on the man I regularly make awkward eye contact with at the same cafe every morning, and most recently, on a coworker who barely says a word to me.

The details change, but the pattern remains the same. It’s less about them and more about projection – someone I see regularly but don’t actually know, a kind of “sweet, sweet fantasy” built through repetition rather than connection.

I’m distracted, not by romance but by proximity and the effect it has on how I behave around my crushes. I’ve never felt particularly self-conscious in my day-to-day life, but around them I become acutely aware of myself. Every interaction is dissected in hindsight, no matter how insignificant.

Turns out the quickest way to make me forget how to act is to repeatedly cross paths with someone I find attractive while trying to appear completely unfazed. Which is to say, I am, in fact, deeply fazed.

Most crushes exist in the space between familiarity and knowing. You see someone often enough for curiosity to develop, but not enough for that curiosity to be resolved. That combination of scarcity and proximity is what makes it feel more significant than it probably is.

I read into small interactions – a glance, a brief exchange, a shared routine. None of it is personal, but all of it becomes easier to revisit than it should be. It creates a pattern, brief moments, followed by overthinking, followed by an attempt to convince myself I’m done thinking about it altogether.

What I enjoy most, though, is what a crush does to the rest of my life. I put more effort into getting ready in the morning. I walk a little faster. I become more attentive to the possibility of something mildly romantic happening. Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” sounds better through my headphones. A trip to my local coffee shop feels marginally more exciting. Ordinary routines begin to acquire a sense of anticipation.

Nothing ever comes of it, of course. The man from the café keeps ordering his flat white. The coworker asks me about work, and only work. The Coles checkout guy is almost certainly just being friendly. The story exists entirely in my head. They keep living their lives, blissfully unaware they’ve been cast in mine.

And yet, for a while, it makes everyday life feel slightly more interesting. Perhaps that’s the point. I always end up in the same place – noticing, interpreting, and then immediately attempting to un-interpret everything I’ve just made up.

Is It a Crush or a Crash?

There are moments when impulse takes over. I want to interrupt the illusion. I want to know if it’s mutual – if they notice me in the same fragmented way I notice them, if my presence registers at all in the spaces we share.

Then the logic kicks back in, and the thought passes just as quickly as it arrives. Making a move would destroy the illusion. And then there’s the more practical fear.

What if I’m met with rejection, and there was never anything there to begin with? What if the version of them I’ve built in my head is so ordinary it dissolves on contact – and worst of all, takes with it the small spark that makes everything else feel slightly more exciting; the way I get ready in the morning, the small pep in my walk, the sense that the day might hold something.

At my core, I am a hopeless romantic. I want to be seen, but I also resist what it means to actually be seen. Maybe because it feels inappropriate, maybe because I want to be pursued rather than exposed, or maybe because some part of me recognises I’m operating from a place of projection rather than reality.

As much as I want my crush (or crushes) to know how I feel about them, I don’t want the spell to break. It’s not really about them – it’s about what disappears when they stop being a possibility. The version of myself that exists in that in-between space is more intentional, slightly more alive.