I've got a crush, and I've got it bad.

I’ve got a crush, and I’ve got it bad. I’m not thinking about a can of Orange Crush, or even a fantasy crush on a movie star. I’m talking about an “I think about him all the time, I can’t wait to see him again, I’m already fantasizing how we will complete each other throughout our lives” kind of crush. It’s bad….It’s good….It’s love…. It’s obsessed… but it’s on blogging.....

My crush on writing is actually a new revival of a love that has been around for a long time. So long it had grown stale, unfortunately. My torrid love affair with writing started more or less as a byproduct of academia at a very young age. Starting very, very early, kindergarten age, maybe, my parents used to have us kids enter things in the fair to earn money for college. Sometimes I would enter passages I had written for school assignments and win ribbons for them. In the 3rd grade I won a 1st place award in a competition for a story I wrote for my teacher. I won money, I made it in the paper, my friends' moms heard me on the radio- I was a young, humble rock star, and I loved it.


Setting up my life's stage for geekhood, I used to look forward to writing assignments. I would always get so caught up in the thrill of the story or from the good feelings that rushed through me when I put words together cleverly. One time in 2nd grade we had an assignment to write a short “tall tale” where we put a picture of a head of some legend at the top (Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed, for example) and then made a “body” of pages on which we wrote a short folkloric tale. My classmates stopped at two or three of those lined brown half-sheets they used to use in elementary schools. I was so into the assignment that I asked to take it home. I wrote and wrote and wrote so much that the body was longer than I was tall. Feeling very excited when I went to turn it in the next day, I showed it to my teacher, letting the body fall all the way to the ground as I held it up over my head. The teacher’s jaw dropped. I wondered if I had done the assignment wrong….

Unfortunately, as much as it is thrilling and satisfying, we all know how confusing love can be. My life has been peppered with intended-to-be-proud-making-but-turned-humiliating acknowledgements of my literary products. In the 5th and 6th grade I won writing competitions and was asked to read my passages about DARE and fire safety during Christmas at the school assemblies. Both times I read them so fast the snickers in the crowd sounded louder than the applause. In 7th grade, probably thinking it would be a good thing, my teacher called me up in the front of the room to use me as an example of someone who writes a wonderful autobiography. Standing in front of the class I remember my thoughts shifting from “what’s going on? What is she talking about,” to “oh my gosh, she’s talking about me- I wanna PUKE!” When I sat down all my friends giggled at me because, in front of the whole class, my face had visibly transitioned from beet-red to a stark shade of white as I made that realization.

In high school, at the pit of one of my depressed stages, I had an incredibly personal story that I turned into my teacher, intending that she was the only one who would ever read it. She told me it was wonderful and it made her cry. She wanted to share it with my mother. Ashamed and embarrassed, I snuck into my teacher’s room when she was gone and stole it out of her desk without anyone knowing. Soon after that she punished the whole class for taking things out of her personal space. When I finally made it to ENGL 1B at CR, I somehow accidentally scored the highest out of the class on some grammar quiz or something. The teacher called me up to the front of the class and announced this, too. Trying to simultaneously reach for the test and run back to my seat at the same time, the teacher intercepted my play by asking, “how does it feel?” My response, “Wow! I guess I did good!” She laughs, “oh, ha ha! You mean you did well.” Of course- the girl who scores highest in grammar doesn’t know how to actually use it…..

Needless to say, experiences like these, especially in my formative years, have made me very secretive about my love for writing. I have volumes and volumes of diaries that I would rather have burned than buried with me out of fear that they might be opened by someone other than me. Random scraps of paper covered with poems inspired at the oddest times are kept in files disguised with boring titles like, “Car Insurance.” What I call the “Angieology,” (the study of Angela) which is a book of passages I have put together and decorated in a way I thought was beautifully at the time, sits in an inconspicuous spot in my room. Though it has been vulnerably shown to a few old boyfriends, has been only opened by me.

But, like any relationship, even love for writing gets stale if you don’t give it some new air to breathe. After having some encouragement on Facebook that my ideas weren’t thought of as crap when read by other eyes, I decided that I was going to shake things up a little bit with this old romance- I was going to stop writing for just myself and go public!

And now I have gone public, and I have a crush on writing all over again. It’s what I think about all the time now. My thoughts have turned into narratives and I look at things and can’t help to wonder what kind of profound things I could write- and then share. Right now I look around my room and I even begin to see a sense of beauty in my lesson plans and parenting class materials strewn across the floor. This represents my adult “professional” life, which ironically to some, but naturally to me, all lies in front of a recently used wig, some chili pepper mardi-gras beads, a joy buzzer, and some odds and ends I have been collecting for a black-light party I would really love to see happen soon. As I look at it now, I already see a passage waiting to happen.

I look at posting my words for others to see the same way a woman looks at her husband of 17 years after going to an effective re-spark-the-sex-drive workshop. It’s a newfound intimacy that has a electric excitement to it, and now I feel like I want it all the time! I went for a bike ride yesterday to wipe my slate clean. But for two and a half hours I could not stop thinking about the passage I had written about my students, which poems I want to post, or what I wanted to write about next!

I couldn’t wait to get home and start writing more. If I had a pen and paper with me I would have stopped on the Hammond trail and wrote something right there. I didn’t want to borrow pen and paper from a friend living in Arcata because that involves chit-chat and I didn’t have the patience for that. I wanted to get home and write! Riding back to my house, the safety corridor had never seemed so long. I finally got home and stupid me, instead of going straight to paper and writing, I decided to do some other activities and encountered two things that made me very upset. I could have screamed in jealous rage. I could have cried. I could have confronted the situation and easily handled it. I could have eaten cookie dough to oblivion, but no, I just wanted to write about my feelings… and then post them.

Along with the excitement, inspiration, and comfort of the crush naturally comes those feelings of obsession. Soon to follow the incessant thoughts is the sudden, over-acute, most embarrassing, self-awareness. Oh no! Is how much I think about this visible to others? Am I calling him too much? Am I laughing too loud at all of his jokes? OMG! Do you think he KNOWS I like him?! Do you think I’m too clingy? Am I FREAKING HIM OUT?!!! Why can’t I just calm down and feel normal when he’s around? Just the same, I feel self-conscious about posting too much. Posting too long. Posting too often. Posting too personal. Posting too non-interesting. Posting too “hey, this is already on her Facebook!” Posting too… crap. Now I’m depressed. I’ll bet he likes another girl anyway. I can understand why he doesn’t like me. I feel like such an idiot for trying so hard. Why would they even want to read junk this long? I’ll be writing to myself forever….

When is love ever smooth? When is love ever easy? Like relationships, writing has its stages, its ups, its downs. Its dry spells and its honeymoons. Its familiarity and its exciting trills. It’s such a satisfied feeling to finally be comfortable enough to reach that level where I can finally be at ease in public, though. No more awkwardness, wondering if it is right. Caring about whether or not other people approve or being scared of gossip and bad-mouthing is such a waste of energy. People will think what they think, so why should I alter my life to try and anticipate or accommodate the uncontrollable?

We have been together for a long time, writing and I, and though perfectly fine and comfortable, it’s just time to move on to the next stage. Before blogging, my relationship with writing was parallel to when he confidently and naturally puts his arm around me on the couch while he is talking to someone else. Without even realizing it, I put my hand on his knee to confirm the connection. The bond is so second nature I almost take it for granted, and sometimes I don’t realize it’s even there anymore until someone from the outside points it out: “Wow! What you have is really something special. Why don’t you post a blog?!” I think about it for a minute, and I turn to him and wink. “You know what,” I say, half suggesting and half having my mind already made up, “I think it would be fun to try something a little different for a while….”