I can’t remember the last time I was infatuated with someone. Well, that’s an exaggeration. I can remember, but it was months ago and it turned out disastrously. I don’t miss infatuation one bit. It’s an attachment as unhealthy as nicotine. What I do miss, however, is feeling sparks. It’s been so long since I’ve met a guy who induces pre-date anxiety, first kiss bliss, and the kind of euphoria more suited to cinema than real life.

Not that immediate chemistry is something that’s happened to me often. For the most part, my post-high school relationships (largely short-term) have been spark-less and have occurred accidentally. That is, I ended up dating someone I wasn’t too keen on upon first encounter. Even my attraction to Summer Guy, a person I eventually fell in love with, was very much a gradual development. Unexciting as that is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. After all, romantic relationships evolve, change, and deepen as much as platonic ones and friendships are rarely immediate.

Still, there is a palpable difference when you meet someone who you instantly hit it off with. My first meetings with both Kyle (in the autumn) and Riley (in the spring) left significant impressions. I was growing discontent with all things Harvard, the people included, and they were breaths of fresh air during periods of time when I would’ve liked nothing more than to leave school. In their own ways, they were the opposites of everyone in my life, and I could’ve talked to either of them all night.

And that is the movie version of romance, the kind written about and marketed to us, the connection people crave despite the overwhelming odds against its common existence. But then again, perhaps that’s what makes it so special and sought-after. It is rare to find someone who you can forge an instant understanding with. The few times that it does happen, it sets the bar remarkably high for the future and as much as common sense testifies to its rarity, it’s what we search for.

As far as sparks go, they’ve only happened a handful of times in the past year and only with Riley was it romantic. I struck up a great rapport with Kyle, had an instant girl crush on Jules, and felt unparalleled professional chemistry with my summer employer. And I don’t know if I really want sparks of the romantic variety at all. Without them, this summer has been incredibly freeing, if only because a crush hasn’t hijacked my every waking thought. In New York, I’ve gone out on a lot of unspectacular first dates and had a lot of good but not earth-shattering hookups. The person who occupies most of my thoughts is in fact Jules. She is the only one in this city I expect phone calls from or meals with. It is nice to not have a guy to miss or pine after. When they’re around, they’re a perk. But when they’re not, I have my girl.

So I guess there is a fear that I’ll eventually meet someone with whom there is that rare spark, who I cannot push into the corner of my mind after the bill is paid or the end credits played. How worth it is it to trade complacency for the possibility of whirlwind love? When it comes to risk versus caution, I usually err on the side of the former but I’m beginning to see the benefits of playing it safe. The popular notion of love at first date is not only overrated but hardly an indication of a successful future. In fact, I sometimes wonder if instant chemistry is actually a warning sign. Riley, after all, felt like puppy love and high school all over again and look how well that turned out. Is infatuation in the beginning an indication of a nuclear ending? If so, maybe I should eschew immediate sparks for a slow burn instead.

This weekend at Dartmouth, I was hanging out with Cece and a pal when we got to discussing her boyfriend. She’s spending her quarter in Hanover on exchange while he’s staying in San Diego and being exceedingly attentive and understanding despite the distance. At one point, I had the urge to tell her, “You have the sweetest boyfriend ever, Cece.”

But I didn’t. Cece is one of my best friends from home and her current boyfriend is my ex-boyfriend from high school. Complimenting her on her great catch seems incredibly odd, when I was the last girl to date him. But then again, the guy she’s with today is not at all the same person I was in love with at 16 and I consider him more a friend (or even, the boyfriend of a friend) than I do an ex. It’s like he’s this entirely new individual who I’ve re-met and re-integrated into my life.

It’s different with my last significant relationship. Try as I might, I’m not able to say that Summer Guy’s my friend, but “ex-boyfriend” doesn’t quite fit either. The latter sounds like such a write-off, and he means so much more than just a blip in my romantic history. On the other hand, I don’t treat or deal with him in the same way as I do my other friends. While I never get into fights with pals, we bicker and argue and vow to not speak. We also go through long periods of regular phone calls and IMs. I have spoken to him more often than I have spoken to anyone else in California, including my mother and my best friend. He is the only person during my entire time at college who has flown to Boston for the express purpose of visiting me. He is one of only two people whose presence I actively yearn for (the other being my mother). Yet from 3,000 miles, I do not nurse hopes of a romantic reconciliation and would be more than wary of dating again even if we lived in the same city. So what am I left with?

It is easy to tell my friends I love them. I say it on the phone, as a goodbye, over email. I mean it, certainly, but when I tell Summer Guy that I love him, it means something more than a response-by-reflex. I love him like I love my best friends — deeply and unconditionally. But he is not my best friend either. My best friends are two girls from California I consider sisters and two Harvard friends who have stuck by me since freshman fall. These are people who have seen me through intense times of change and tumult. How can I say my love for him is the same as my love for them? And yet, it seems quite fitting. After all, I share with him a unique understanding I share with each of them. Cultivated over time, it is something that can only be felt, not articulated.

There is no one else in my life like Summer Guy. The almost frightening truth is that he is irreplaceable. Thus, I don’t want to call him my ex-boyfriend because he is not just my ex-boyfriend, but I don’t want to call him my friend because he is not just my friend. And so I guess the best I can do is say that he is someone I love very, very much.

When we met, I barely gave you a glance over, but five minutes past the door, I saw you in full light and was hooked.

It could have been your laugh or the smile that followed. It was more likely that in you, I saw everything I wanted in me.

You are all beauty and presence. Before you, I am struck nervous and uncertain and overwhelmed at once. I am fumbling for the right words, the right gestures, the right expressions to convey my interest without betraying my lust. And you are too too beautiful, too perfectly obliging, too innocuously affectionate for me to think that you could possibly realize your effect. I don’t know how to tell you but you terrify me in the same instance you awe me.

And even when you speak to my face, I can barely look you in the eye. If this isn’t love at first sight, if this isn’t the pull of unrequited passion, then I don’t know what is. Because you have warmed something deep and untouched within my chest and all I can do is wonder about the nature of your intentions.

“So how many hearts did you break this week?” someone asked me tonight. I think I will allow myself the silly luxury of entertaining the notion of our romantic possibility, and I answer, “Maybe just my own.”

Nineteen-year-old Harvard undergrad seeks bringer of chocolate for this season of love. You provide the sugar; I’ll provide the spice. While you’re at it, do triple-duty as a dinner date and cuddle buddy. No, I won’t cuddle your penis.

White horse optional, three courses minimum. Heart-shaped construction paper card included with every purchase. Bonus points for waiting until dessert to pinch my butt.

If post-date action is what you’re after: be hot, have stamina, and fly me to Paris. Manhattan will get you to second base.

As my uterus is not licensed to birth, remember to BYOC (contraception will not be provided.) Love letters, flowers, and nude photos may be directed to:

184 Mather Mail Center
Cambridge, MA 02138

Please woo responsibly.

(Seriously now, my current Valentine’s plans consist of watching “You’ve Got Mail”. Um, save me?)

My friend asked me today why it was so hard to see her ex. I didn’t really know what to tell her. She had made the unwise decision to have breakfast with him, as if a meal shared with the enemy would heal still-fresh wounds. Being with him made her feel better, she told me, but she immediately felt worse the second they parted — even more so than before.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised. After all, give or take a few labels and bullshit reasons, I am more or less going through the same thing. The way I see it, these guys are a lot like cocaine. It feels good when you’re on them but god does it hurt when you’re off. Not that I’d know from personal experience, of course. Thus, the most comforting response I could offer to “Why does it hurt so much?” was still painfully honest. I said to Allie that it gets better with time despite how dire it must seem at the moment. Like all things, this too will past. Trite but true, and you can’t argue with what you know to be certain.

Still, it doesn’t help a bit. Not in the meantime. There’s no comfort in knowing that three or four months down the line, we’ll be numb to this, indifferent thanks to time’s passing. It doesn’t make the days less difficult, drive away dark thoughts, or ease frustrations. But the future is still something. For example, my present proves that the past was surmountable, and that is a comfort in itself. After last year, I think I can force myself to deal with just about anything and know that I’ll still come out alive.

Because of Cooper, I drank and partied and slept a lot (and around) but I never took a knife to my own wrist and I kept up appearances as difficult as they were to maintain. I stayed close to my friends, got by on Bs and BS in class, made it back to California (albeit intoxicated on the flight home), and even had a functional relationship over the summer. Sometimes you have to keep on trucking, and that’s all life has really been ever since college began, since Cooper happened, since Harvard happened. Save for a few brief reprieves (i.e. CK and Summer Guy), it’s been one long effort to keep on going. And at the very least, I know I’m capable of it, even after such a difficult blow.

So I’m still going, which is why I’m convinced that Allie can and will too. It hurts now because she can still remember what it was like when life came unblemished. But that’s all CSP is and that’s all Aidan is: blemishes. They are surface wounds which have done no permanent harm, that we will eventually heal from, and that will undoubtedly scar … but even that is not a bad thing. I like to think that scars add character, shape who we are, and eventually, they become so much a part of us that we don’t even remember how deeply we must’ve been cut in order for it to have left a mark. And by the time new lovers ask after old wounds, we will have long been veterans and all the better for having known this battlefield.