A 19-year-old experiences intense, one-sided attraction to an older male coworker in a small theoretical math group, feeling mesmerized during meetings and convinced the feeling will never be reciprocated. The narrator attempts to change—trying to be thinner, smarter, funnier, and more interesting—and suppresses impulses to text or invite him out, then feels self-directed anger for not confessing. The behavior includes laughing at jokes, memorizing small details, and punishing restraint. The emotional pattern resembles the mythic Echo and Narcissus, illustrating how unreciprocated longing can burn, consume attention, and deepen self-doubt.
He's my co-worker. We both belong to a small group working in theoretical math, and we see each other almost every week for meetings. He's several years older than me, and I guess when I look at him, I see a guy who's incredibly smart and seems to have his life figured out. Every time he explains a problem, I find myself getting lost, just watching his face.
Somehow, I've convinced myself that if I just get thinner, or smarter, or somehow better, I'll finally have permission to feel this way-maybe even to tell him. What do I do? How am I supposed to feel?
What you're going through is extremely painful and not childish at all. People have been going through it forever, of course. In Ted Hughes's retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the nymph Echo has an almighty crush on Narcissus, and "like a cat in winter at a fire / She could not edge close enough / To what singed her, and would burn her." Sound familiar?
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