Shiny Man
When Lizard Brain won't quit obsessing.
He was a juicy peach. I couldn’t help but objectify him in my head. My prefrontal cortex was shaming me, but my lizard brain wanted him.
“He’s so young, He’s too pretty. He’ll have nothing but pretty. What are you doing? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you ever like guys who are a reasonable choice? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
And then I sighed inwardly as he spoke to me. Sometimes, attractive people are overwhelming to the senses. I’m aware he’s a person with depth and meaning, but Lizard Brain doesn’t care about his humanness. Lizard Brain cares about how he might smell, feel and taste. Lizard Brain is obsessed.
Me me, as in not Lizard Brain me or at least the part of me that wants to behave like who I think I am, will use every tool in her arsenal to try and protect me from this crush. None of it works. None of it ever works, and in fact, much like any other addiction, the more I fight it, the more I am engaging it and fueling it. It grows with every attempt at quelling.
I met him at the opening of a work thing. His friend began talking to my friend, and we were thrown together in politeness. He tried to chat with me across the human circle and then awkwardly moved across it so we weren’t competing with their conversation. I noticed he was taller than me. As a tall woman, I notice it quickly. It feels better if I have to look up to make eye contact. I spend my life looking down, bending down, hunching to connect with others. My neck was pleased with this refreshing change.
We talked with ease, and I realised he was charismatic. He knows how to talk to strangers. Even with the slightly jarring tone of his accent, I recognised he’s a sales guy. He has learnt how to be smooth, particularly with women. He’ll whip out the romance novel’s crooked smile and beguile anyone with ease.
I don’t know how much of him knows he’s doing this. Whether he purposefully cultivated these skills or whether he was a born people magnet. After two-plus years of “knowing” him, I maintain a theory of nature versus nurture. He uses it to be successful in his career and his relationships with other people. I theorise that it’s potentially an armour as well, though. He has grown this identity, and it protects him from something. Or maybe I’m just psycho-analysing someone because that protects me from something too.
I am fortunate(?) He works in my industry, he understands my job and the complexity of what I do. He values it. I wish he didn’t. It’d be much easier to keep it at a humming, ignorable lust than to actually like the guy. We’re becoming friends.
When I am struggling, I feel like I’m drowning in the stress of running something I’m new at, something which is taking every part of my work skills to survive. He sees it, and he pauses his work to give me some comfort. I know he didn’t mean anything by it. Despite the prolific flirting I’ve seen him do with everyone, it turns out he’s also just kind.
I’m fucked.
A young, kind man who exudes confidence and tells me, “You’re doing a really good job, this type of thing is super stressful”. My burnt-out, frazzled brain almost cries at his comforting smile and validation. Not because he’s hot, not because he’s clever but because he saw to throw me a tiny lifeline amongst the chaos. He saw me. It means nothing to him; he said it without thinking or ulterior motive. The bastard is kind.
And thus I fall into the age-old, well-trod path of me crushing on someone who is my friend. A narrative I could write with my eyes closed. One that always ends differently from the novels, perhaps because the reality is that if you’re not attracted to someone when you meet them, it’s unlikely to ever change.
I concentrate on my work and I get through.
We begin messaging. Correction: I initiate messaging, and he somewhat participates. I don’t know why. My insecurities say it’s because of my job. I can be helpful to him, and I think he’s used to collecting people who will be useful. But then he sends me a picture of himself lying on his bed, doing a peace sign, when I ask if he got home safe. My spidey senses tingle slightly. Maybe this is just how he is with friends? Perhaps that’s too cynical or reductionist, but people who do well in their careers are often also people collectors. I say that with judgment as someone with an unintentional bleeding heart, but also with an element of respect. I’m mildly jealous of someone’s ability to curate relationships when I feel like mine just grow like beautiful and spontaneous weeds.
What draws me to people who aren’t attracted to me? I’ve discovered that there is a hole in my chest. It’s cracked open and gapes like an open wound that no one can see, but I can feel. It feels like a deep aching sadness. I carry it with me, and Lizard Brain spends most of its time looking for things to fill it up. Whether it’s food, rom-coms, people who treat me badly, video games or YouTube rabbit holes, nothing ever fills it up. I walk around feeling incomplete. Like a puzzle made up of broken pieces that only fit messily together with tape, so that I resemble a complete person on the outside.
I saw him again, the next year, for work. We chat on our time off, I help him with some errands, we laugh at stupid jokes, and it’s all very easy. I know I’m just his work friend. When I’m alone, I feel sad that I’ll take any scrap of attention that he carelessly throws my way. I’m so painfully aware of my lack of self-worth. I can see how it rips me apart, but I continue because when he laughs at something I’ve said, I almost believe I’m worth something. We spend a night with our colleagues, drinking beer and sitting around in a hazed stupor, everyone exhausted by the intense weeks at work. We end up sitting next to each other and spend the night making each other laugh - it’s pretty much the perfect evening.
Despite this good feeling, the dynamic that I am actively engaging in crushes me internally. Every little dopamine high is ultimately followed by the inevitable feelings of shame and my disbelief in being worthy of any of his attention. Why am I doing this to myself?
The bizarre part is that I can see it all. I can watch it, I can explain it, I can tell you why I’m behaving and feeling the way that I do. I can psychoanalyse the bejesus out of myself. But this makes it feel even worse, like I’m watching myself hurt myself, but I’m too far above to stop it. Much like bingeing to the point of pain, the pain is known. It’s created by me, and it’s compulsive, out of my control. It serves me somehow.
He means nothing by it. He doesn’t want any heaviness; in fact he clearly follows as much levity as possible, the path of least drama, of least intenseness. I’m the opposite, I have all the feelings, everything is deep and meaningful, and I crave real connections with people, not light-hearted banter made of candy floss.
I reveal my feelings and thoughts, and he slowly dissolves away into nothingness. It scares him, the thing he thought was light, fun and easy has become complicated. He’s too busy, he’s not interested in messy. I expected it. It doesn’t hurt less, though. I’m not an optimist, I never expected him to arrive unexpectedly at my door in the pouring rain to declare that he burns for me. I know what and who I am to him, and I feel guilty for infiltrating a tiny part of his life with my messy. No one needs any of that in their life.
He is removed from my socials, I delete our messages and try to spring clean my life of the idealised version of someone I don’t really know. Every so often, I send a message to needle my wound, to remind myself of how worthless I am to him, regret it instantly and begin the cycle all over again. He goes on and lives his life, and so do I. I know that this tragic and hole-riddled friendship will no doubt be forgotten by him and repeated by me with someone else in the future. And so it goes, trying to fill an unfillable void with the next unsuspecting shiny-looking person.