Today I wanted to write a postcard for my platonic crush.
To me, I define a platonic crush as someone you are chronically drawn to and consistently occupies a little rent free room in your mind. And every time you see them you think “damn I wish we were friends”. It still breaches a similar kind of crazy that comes with romantic crushes, mostly because you’re still trying to venture out of your comfort zone in a way that benefits from blind trust and vulnerability. Blind trust in the fact that your gut feeling that someone would be a good friend is correct and vulnerability in the way you provide access for them, to your true self.
I revel in romantic unrequited crushes to the point where I even wrote a song dedicated to my one week old crush last year. When it comes to platonic crushes though, I don’t tend to settle in ambiguity as quickly. I want to know if I can spend hours in deep endless conversation with someone or if they’ll just ask me about my day and how I feel briefly before we go our separate ways. It’s a different kind of desperation.
This isn’t to say that acquaintances don't bring an essential and valuable part of life (more on that in the next postcard).
My best friends are my chosen family. Not just the people I choose to have drinks and watch movies with. They teach me everything about life and inspire me every day. Having a crush on someone who could transform into a relationship like this is a possibility that sparks so much excitement it’s impossible to sit still and hope that it happens naturally. Platonic crushes demand work and effort and require my active attention and infatuation just as much as my romantic ones.
You might stumble into a friendship with ease, but maintaining a familial closeness over the span of decades takes a different kind of dedication and persistence. The kind that starts with butterflies and ends with a single look to unwind all your worries left unsaid. My friends have all independently made the joke that upon learning about my history, trauma and what now seems to be some really unhinged lore, it seems like the universe granted me the gift of friendship as a way of compensating. If all the family dinners chastising my love for friendships and all my painful pasts has led the universe to allow me to have platonic crushes in the most transformative way, I won’t ever find the words to thank it.
Here’s to trying.
thank you for this post, it really solidified a lot of internal feelings i've been having, but could never articulate. looking forward to the next post x