It’s Been 365 Days Since My Endless Crush Ghosted Me, and I am Totally Fine

A story of survival

Adeline Dimond
8 min readJun 13, 2022

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Photo by Liam Simpson on Unsplash

Last year, my endless crush, whom I call Rigatoni, and I finally went on a date. Then we went back to his place for “love and other indoor sports” (where my Judy Blume fans at?) and it was great. Not because the sex was great — it wasn’t — but because I’ve had a crush on Rigatoni for twenty-four years, twenty-five years if you count the year since that magical night.

Then I was ghosted. For an entire year. If the twenty-four crushed-out years prior to the date were a form of purgatory, the year since the date has been hell. But I survived. I am fine. No, really. I am.

The ghosting happened in slow motion. I correctly predicted it after Rigatoni wrote “that’s so nice” in response to something exuberant I wrote the morning after, and I knew it was over. This was a blow. I had a desperate crush on Rigatoni for approximately one half of my life, finally had a great date with him on June 6, 2021, after which he said he had the best time ever. He also said that when he got back from a work trip we’d go out on my side of town, which is practically a marriage proposal in Los Angeles. I swooned in my Uber home. And then the ghosting started and never stopped.

But I’m fine. Truly. The headline is misleading; it’s been more than 365 days since the date, it’s been 372 days. But who’s counting? Not me. I am not counting. I am so not-counting, so totally fine, that I am now qualified to give survival tips if you’ve been ghosted by the love of your life, by the smartest, hottest, most accomplished man, who surfs and snowboards and loves to travel.

To be sure, there was a time when I would have decidedly not been fine, because I used to be a total psycho about this stuff. I once took the subway to a friend’s house so I could call the cute doctor who just dumped me from an unfamiliar number (this was when people still had home phones). I did this multiple times until he agreed to meet with me again to explain, why. Why was it over when I’m a great cook and fun in bed and kinda pretty and super chill? On the night he dumped me, I was making him baked brie with pears and walnuts. Hello? Do you think anyone has made that for him since? I don’t. Eventually the cute doctor relented, and…

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