/Crush

my brother says that a "/" followed by a word means the word has "ended".  ergo, my blog title means that i am over my crush on Bertrand.  or rather, i am over the silly notion that he and i could actually be a couple.

i was going to ask him out - seriously.  and i was going to wait until holy thursday.  why?  because then i would have four days to get over any kind of humiliation i may have felt before i had to see him again.  i know it's not right to basically have made room for my failure, but hope for the best and prepare for the worse, right?

i am not discounting my gut feeling that he is in some way attracted to me.  i am merely admitting that perhaps it is one of those innocuous crushes that only pops up when we have a meaningful interaction.  that he flirts with me only because he thinks it is fun to flirt with me, but there are no other feelings involved.

i popped into his office at the end of the day yesterday.  no one was around to stay for drinks and i really just wanted to chat for a bit.  so i poked my head in and said, "hey!  what are you doing?"  and he said, "oh, just finishing up and then i'm going to meet Isis for a drink."  not a big deal - Isis is a friend of mine too and i knew they had been trying to get together for a catch-up drink for weeks but haven't gotten around to it.  but it was something in the way he said it or perhaps his body language that told me it was a bit of a shut-down - as in, "no, i'm not willing to spend any time with you today."  nothing that harsh, of course, but it was something i couldn't put my finger on.  so, i quickly covered up my true intentions (because of course, time with him was exactly what i had popped in for) and said, "anyway, have you talked to Mon lately?  we were just talking about her today and i thought maybe you might've seen her recently."  and he updated me briefly on his lack of news on her and then i wished him a good evening.

and like that, it was over.  the bubble burst and that small hope i had that was sheltered in that bubble drifted back to the earth where it belonged.  i'm not sorry that it's been grounded because there were too many big obstacles that i wasn't sure i'd be able to get over.

i'm not going to stop chatting with him when i can or being friendly.  but i think somehow my window to be work friends with him closed when i was too busy pretending like i didn't care.  like i was standoffish for too long and now trying to be friends seems forced and inorganic (which frankly, it is). 

perhaps another lesson to tuck away in my already bulging file labeled, "you can't get hurt if you're aloof."