Not being talked about

Of all the emotions you can hold inside, none is more difficult - in the way it eats at you and demands your full attention - than wondering whether the person you're thinking about is thinking about you. If I'm unusually angry, sad, or happy, there are many way for me to express those feelings. There are hundreds of books written on how to manage or channel those kinds of emotions. But when your thoughts are trapped speculating on someone else's thoughts - someone out of reach, mind you (otherwise we're merely looking at an unhealthy form of attachment) - what can you do? How helpless are you? Each cycle of "Is s/he thinking of me?" only leads to another, and the more you think about it, the worse it becomes, as the disproportionality of your focus compared to the focus you presume the object of your desire doesn't return becomes obvious to you. Unlike so many other emotions (with the sole exception, perhaps, of chronic depression) it feeds on itself.

You already know you can't spend your life wondering what someone else thinks of you - you hear that over and over as you grow up - but that doesn't mean you can't spend your life wondering if someone else is thinking about you at all, does it? Isn't that, ultimately, the difference between being attracted (in a physical, or surface-level sense) from being enthralled, or even in love, with another person? Or, to put it another way, "Does s/he even know I exist?"

I'm reminded of a line from The Picture of Dorian Gray: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Anyhow, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, this is what I am thinking about.