Crushes for most of my life were something the cool kids had, but didn't really seem necessary, like chocolate milk and Lunchables at lunch, something to be proudly displayed and talked about, swapping a laffy taffy for vanilla pudding,  giggling all the while.

It was like this secondary language, social norm, that someone forgot to teach me. I reached the conclusion that everyone's exaggerating, like I was, because this was just another game we'd play, swapping names and hiding smiles behind hands.

Turns out it wasn't a game, and people weren't exaggerating, and I reached the conclusion that I just had something missing, like forgetting the baking soda when baking cookies.
All I needed was baking soda, in my 5th grade brain.
So I pursued a boy, thinking feelings would rise to the surface if I "faked it till I made it", and they did rise, like dead fish in a pond. They were not romantic feelings, just feelings of failure.

The next year I found my baking soda.
Her name was Josephine White.

I don't have anything missing, I'm just a different recipe.