The Purgatory of an Endless Crush

Forever living in the space between desire and futility

Pope Saint Gregory I Frees the Souls from Purgatory With His Prayers, 1731, Francesco Fontebasso (From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Collection)

My crush is twenty-five years old. Not the man himself. He’s fifty-one, born in 1970 like me, and I’ve thought about him for at least a quarter of a century by now. We will never get together, but my desire never goes away. This might be the definition of Purgatory.