The Upside of Unrequited

perfect alignment of feelings and circumstances. It’s almost unfathomable that it happens as often as it does.

I don’t entirely understand how anyone gets a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. It just seems like the most impossible odds. You have to have a crush on the exact right person at the exact right moment. And they have to like you back. A perfect alignment of feelings and circumstances. It’s almost unfathomable that it happens as often as it does.

But there’s this thing I feel when I meet another Jewish person in the wild. It’s like a secret invisible high five.

Because there’s nausea and fog, but there’s also this: an unshakable feeling that something wonderful is about to happen. That’s the part I can’t explain. No matter how unlikely, I always have a secret shred of hope. And as feelings go, that’s a pretty addictive one.

But it’s different, being called beautiful. Just beautiful, without conditions.

butterflies and haziness and heart eyes, but underneath all that, there’s this bass line of I can’t believe this

Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It’s magic.

Because that’s the thing about change. It’s so painfully normal. It’s the most basic of all tragedies.

There’s just something terrifying about admitting you like someone. In a way, it’s actually easier when there’s no chance of anything happening. But there’s this threshold where things suddenly become possible. And then your cards are on the table. And there you are, wanting, right out in the open.

And suddenly, I feel like crying, but not in a bad way. More like in the way you feel when someone gives you a perfect present—something you’d been wanting, but thought you couldn’t ask for. It’s that feeling of someone knowing you in all the ways you needed to be known.