I need to focus. And yet, I am teetering on the edge of limerence, that exquisite affliction, that cognitive distortion wrapped in longing. My imagination, ever the unreliable narrator, spins narratives I should not entertain.
I am a sucker for attention wrapped in kindness, for the illusion of mutual recognition, and for the electric hum of a "we". And him -him- I have always admired. Adored the way his art bled neon into the void, how his photographs opened portals into inter-dimensional dreamscapes, windows to impossible places. I adore his creativity, the way he carves something impossible out of the possible.
And then, something I admired the most was gone. A family fractured, a constellation collapsing into singularities. He stopped posting. I was not observing by then though. But I know that ache too well -when my own family shattered, when my father sought something I was not, when my mother was left betrayed. That story ended me. And then, knowing his family unraveled too, it ended me for a second time. We are shaped by broken things, by the algorithms of loss.
I started to adore his music then. Silently as always. But he was there, orbiting the same digital ether, casually saying, "we should try to post something this year". We. How dare he weaponise a pronoun against me? If he knew. I am a sucker for we. For the mirage of belonging, for the illusion that the borders of the self can blur into something shared.
And so, I started to fantasise. A dangerous thing for someone like me. Over ten years of subconscious data collection, of cognitive biases filling in the blanks with idealised projections. To me he is the coolest person in the universe, my retro-futurist icon, a human-shaped masterpiece of outrun aesthetics and impossible charm. A rockstar. My impossibility. And I adore him.
"I hope I get to come see you this year".
Did I mention I am a sucker for attention? Those words, simple and weightless, annihilated me. Most likely they do not mean anything personal, and yet they detonated something inside the social, lonely love-craver that lurks in the dusty corners of my metaphorical heart. My prefrontal cortex screams rationality, but the limbic system is a reckless dreamer, a fool that mistakes probabilities for dreams and vice versa. And the platonic capsule that keeps me safe is beginning to crack.
But I cannot let this happen to me. Not at this stage of life. I am coursing through my third decade, a ship that has seen too many sirens to mistake them for safe harbours (well, 3 to be precise). But I cannot afford another shipwreck. I cannot afford the indulgence of impossible love and its sufferings. So I shall do what I do best -self-sabotage.
I will become unbearable, a charmingly unhinged lunatic. I will convince myself that for him I am nothing more than a potential amusing tourist guide. I am just a glitch in the system, an odd petty anomaly not worth exploring. I need to dismantle the fantasy before it dismantles me. So that I can continue adoring him in peaceful silence.
