An Open Letter to A Secret Crush. From a Girl Who's No Longer Young.

I have a confession to make. I like you. I really do. I wish you'll never find out. But I'm writing this anyway. I don't think you read my blog so I think my secret is safe here. Or maybe I wish you will find out somehow, without me having to tell you in person. It scares me that you'll find out, and yet I would really really like you to know how I feel. So here goes. I'm shrouding you in a veil of anonymity, translucent though it is. I'm not making sense here. But my point is, I like you. I really do.

I know I'm no longer young. And you're far from young either. As a wise and grown-up lady, I should just have told you how I feel, straight, without metaphors or jargon. There's nothing to be scared of, really. I'm sure you've been through this before, with other women. And I've felt this way before too, for other men. But for some strange unexplainable reason, I still could not muster enough courage to tell you in person.

Call me a coward, or a sissie, or childish and immature. Call me a prude, call me frigid. But when you're with me I just become quiet. I am speechless for things that matter, but verbose on the less important things. Things such as politics and waterfalls and India, things of no consequence at all that I tend to forget about them in a moment.  Why do we keep talking about these little things and so painstakingly steer away from talk of feelings and dreams and family and past relationships? It's unnatural. It's tiresome. It's making us drift apart just as soon as we as we get an inch too close for comfort.

But still the same, I like you. There's a mystery about you that I could not explain. Your ideas fascinate me. Your kindness and your vision impress me. I enjoy the way you make me laugh, love the way you make me think. I very rarely meet a man who knows the books I read, sings the songs I sing, and dreams of the adventures I long to do. But maybe they're all in my head. maybe you're just being you. Perhaps the reason why I like you is because I don't know you enough. Or I don't know you at all (though I would like to believe that that is not true, maybe I do know you a bit). Whether you are real or imagined, I do know that I really enjoy every moment I have with you. I think you are amazing. I think you are magical.

These feelings I indulge in now should have been extinct a decade ago. I don't recall feeling this way since college. And now these teenage feelings haunt me again, and they're more ferocious and intense than ever. Crushes are supposed to be for teens, not for middle-aged cardiologists. I'm 34 but I get these butterflies in my stomach whenever our eyes meet. My little heart leaps whenever you smile. There's a shiver in my spine when the back of your hand lightly touches my arm. My knees turn into jelly whenever you hold my hand. Haven't you noticed that whenever we're together, there's a silly smile plastered on my face? You make me sing - in the car, while walking, while drinking beer. Geeesh, you even made me dance once, and I never dance. Since i met you, this old woman is a little girl all over again, a silly, lovestruck, little girl crazy over her first crush. Thank you for that.

I'm not expecting anything. I don't expect that you'll like me back. Let's just stay how we are. Let's just talk and laugh, and sing and dance, and walk and travel. We need not talk about the serious stuff. We can just talk about the usual things - politics, the city, mountains, Nepal, and that neighbor you have. You need not be with me whenever I ask you for your company (which is practically all the time, at least in my head, I just don't tell you about it). Let's just take it slow, so slow, as slow as you would want it to be.

But I really like you. I really do. And if you get to read this, please, just give me a sign that you've read this and I'll finally tell you about it.