Yeah but it was unrequited
I fell in love with this guy. He was the first guy I'd ever fallen deeply and properly in love with. I was head over heals for him but since I'm the type of person to hide my feelings, I acted cold and distant whilst wishing he felt the same way as me. I was stupid, and I payed the price. My good friend also fell for him. He felt the same way but they never got together or dated. Still hurt though. But that's the problem, I was. And so I managed to get over him, despite all that I wish I could've been more honest about my feelings towards him, despite being an idiot. But that'll never be, hes leaving soon, and I'll never be able to see him ever again. But oh well, love is strange.
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Oh man, unrequited love? I'm a veteran. I have a very narrow type: good-natured men and women with intellect sharp enough to cut yourself on. Almost always older than I am. Pretty sure I imprinted on this family friend I had around when I was a kid who embodied all these traits.
One thing I've learned, though, is that I can always, /always/ count on the feelings dissipating, even if it takes as long as three years - which is a long time to be hung up over someone. It's always hard in the thick of it - infatuation /feels/ timeless. But in the lulls in between you always sit and stare blank-eyed and think, "God, that was it? What was I so hung up about?" Only one of my countless crushes developed into something more substantial. Even then the relationship lasted a mere three months. My more successful relationships (though I have not had many) always came from a quieter regard - people I found easy to get along with, more friends than objects of obsessive longing, who didn't tie my nerves into knots.
I've always wondered why. Even now I can't give you a satisfactory answer. It might be the way I handle infatuations. It might be that I actively seek out people who won't requite my feelings as objects of infatuation.
But by far the biggest takeaway from my collective experiences with infatuation is that these intense crushes are unequivocally more about me more than the objects of my desire. They're about who /I/ want to be. My crushes embody aspects I wish /I/ possessed. And instead it's sublimated into these intense feelings of possession and self-worth and fantasy. Rather than trying to fight these crushes, I find it's far more productive to use them to fuel self-growth. I mean, just by virtue of developing a crush I've managed to isolate these qualities I wish to possess. So now all I have to do is to strive for them. And when I get validation from my crushes for these improvements? Man, what a high. It doesn't always work, but hey, way better than what I did during adolescence, which is tie myself into anxious knots over what-ifs.