Anatomy of a TV Crush

It’s like a cold, a bad cold. You don’t know how you got it, you don’t know how long you’ll have it, but you know that eventually, you’ll get rid of it. That’s how these crushes are. One day, your life is all fine: you go to work, you come home, you meet with your friends, you play with your dog, you take comfort in the knowledge that there are people who love you – you just go about your life and all its humdrum-ness and excitement as normally as normal for you.

You don’t watch the news, you don’t obsess about anybody outside of the perimeter of your little world (and laugh at those who do) - you are grounded on the reality of your life. Then the Pope gets sick. This Pope whom you have prayed for every single Sunday and Holy Day of obligation… “with John Paul, our Pope, and George Ringo, our Bishop…” or something like that… the words of the liturgical prayers are almost ingrained in your head. You might not think you pay attention to the mass, but believe me, prayers, like rain from the sky, are bound to hit you one way or another; that's the mystery and grace of prayers. This Pope – the only one you have known for most of your adult life.

And you still don’t watch the news. You’ve got a life, you’ve got a job, your world is so far away from the Vatican. But something - call it The Communion of Saints, call it love, just call it something - stirs inside you. This time, the news is personal.

So you read the news websites and you get Breaking News alerts. And then you watch… you start flipping among different news channels. Good thing all of these happened outside of the ratings sweep period and most of the network shows you normally watched were repeats.

And then you saw her:

You didn’t catch her name at first, but you were bound to sooner or later – this is the age of 24/7 news after all. Delia Gallagher. The first sign that you know you have a crush on someone is when you Google that person’s name.

You are mesmerized. And before you know it, your safe little world gets a bit out of orbit and the solid floor you walk on suddenly seems a wee wobbly. You begin to question your sanity, but you are still mesmerized. You see her and it breaks your heart and you don’t even know why. She laughs and it makes you smile without you even realizing it. Your reality shifts into a parallel universe where she is real enough to make it to your heart.

But not real enough that you would want to compromise the safety and relative normalcy of your world. That’s the difference between you and a stalker. Between you and Delia is a great abyss - physical and otherwise - that you know you would, could, and should NEVER EVER attempt to cross. To even think about it is totally out of the equation. (Plus she's in Rome and you're in the States and.. it's kinda hard to do.)

So… it’s like a bad, viral cold. Eventually, you’ll get rid of it. But while you still have it, you cherish it because something touched your heart and got you out of the boredom of your world and that is all good. You cherish it because you know that once you get rid of it, it’s gone. You cherish it because once in a while, we all need some distraction to transcend us into a metaphysical reality which we could not otherwise enter at will.