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Notes on Crushing - 02/02/25

When I have a crush I go absolutely insane. This is one of the most important aspects of Juniper. It's the reason I call myself a thunderstorm - my emotions feel heightened, intense, earth-shattering, like lightning, and there's maybe nowhere this is more evident than in limerence.

If you look limerence up, you're gonna get a definition about deep romantic longing. This is a useable definition, but it's not quite what I mean by the term - I mean a deep longing in general; infatuation and desire, often to the point of obsession and desperation. "Romantic" is a word that I love sometimes, but I find it often pops up in definitions and discussions where its presence hinders and obscures. I'm a relationship anarchist - I believe that relationships should be defined by the people in them and that, as such, there is no singular one model of Romantic Relationship we should all be aspiring to. All of my relationships are abnormal - I have a pretty standard romantic relationship with my girlfriends, but there's three of us! And my romantic relationships aren't inherently superior to my platonic relationship with my best friend. I have friends I kiss and sometimes fuck! It's kinda great! I'd recommend it! I could keep going on about relationship anarchy, but this is a post about crushes, and what that word means for me.

There's an argument to be made for aromantic!June. I don't really feel a difference between romantic and platonic attraction. But I don't personally find that word for me. I'm in a romantic relationship and I feel that love so strongly and very specifically romantically! It's moreso that when I desire someone, in many sorts of ways, that desire can deepen and ache, like a tooth cavity. Whether that attraction is romantic or something else is determined by what I want from the relationship. So it's not that my romantic attraction feels like every other attraction, but that I can get just as obsessed about a friend I want to hang out with every once in a while as I can with someone I want to fall asleep with every night.

THIS is what I mean when I say I have a crush. Maybe it's someone I want to date, maybe it's someone I want to hook up with, maybe it's a friend I want to kiss, maybe I don't reall yknow what I want from them except for this sense of *I can't stop thinking about you and I want to get to know you*. Because that's what the feeling is, really, it's a desire for closeness, for vulnerability, for MORE, and it manifests for me in this insane intense way, this desire that takes over my brain and my heart, turning my life into a love story. Not all desire for closeness makes me feel like this, I certainly have friends I want to spend more time with who don't make me feel like my lungs are full of flowers, but sometimes that CRUSH switch in my brain is flipped. It happens more often than not with other trans women - maybe it's because with them I feel safe and feel that closeness and vulnerability is something I could actually achieve.

And once I'm there, I'm THERE. I fall hard and fast. I get obsessed. I can't stop thinking about it. If we've already had some closeness (listen, I've developed crushes for girls AFTER hooking up), I replay it in my head when I'm trying to fall asleep. It drives me insane. It makes me feel sick. I kinda hate it! It's really frustrating to feel my entire brain and body give itself over to an obsession like this and it makes me act weird with the people I love - I had a great time hanging out with a girl, and got home and realized I had a crush, and the next time I saw her I was a complete fucking wreck because the crush made me anxious as hell. My crushes and obsessions are one of my least favorite parts of myself because of how seasick it makes me.

And at the same time. It's really also one of my favorite things about me. I like that I love so much and so easily. I like that I feel so powerfully - I've experienced terrible depression and these tempests make me feel so much more alive. And I really love caring for people and I'm so so glad I get to express so much love. There's another thing besides crushes I want to talk about in this post, and I don't have a good word for it. If limerence is a deep obsession, this feeling is the opposite - small and painless, but just as heartwrenching. I call it a miniature falling-in-love - a moment that makes me fall a little bit for someone, that helps me see why they're so special. It's like they just start glowing. It happens a lot with singing: my favorite memories of it are a friend playing ukulele for me, or a friend singing while cooking dinner, or two friends singing Chappell Roan in the car while my girlfriend and I cuddled in the backseat. I was getting closer to all of these people and it made me see what their other loved ones saw in them, it showed me how beautiful and special and perfect they all are. It might be the best feeling in the world. It's like the feeling you get when you look at the stars on a cloudless night, but instead of the sky it's a person, fulgent.

Miniature-falling-in-loves sometimes lead to crushes, but not always. But they're related by both being functions of my brain, the ways that I get attached and obsessive, the ways my emotions feel huge and explosive, the ways it makes me feel ALIVE. It's kinda terrifying and horrible sometimes, it makes me feel insane, when I have a crush I want to just melt into a muddle and join the water cycle, but I think at the end of the day I'm glad I get to love so much. I'm glad I get to have my wonderful polycule, my perfect best friend, and so many loves who have created new ways of loving and living with me. It's really cool. I couldn't imagine being monogamous and trying to limit all the love in my heart - those mini-fallings have taught me that I don't have a limited store of love. When I fall in love, it's not drawing on the same well - it's finding a new spring of love and desire and care.

This got sappy. Let's bring it back to reality a bit - OH GOD I HAVE CRUSHES AGH. NONE ROMANTIC BUT THEY'RE EATING ME UP OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO BECOME THE JOKER. I'm kinda bad at having very casual friends - even those friends who I only wanna hang out with every once in a while, I still want them to hug me tight and kiss me if they want and I want to tell them I love them so so fucking much, because I do.