When Does Hope Become A Bad Thing?

I've been without cereal for the last few days. Between Halloween festivities and sleeping in and volunteer work, there just hasn't been time to get to the grocery store for milk. It was a toss-up: grocery shop or finish making my Halloween costume? The costume won, hands down. And I have to say, it was a pretty good one!

I got a little ambitious this year and decided to actually SEW parts of my costume. Bad idea. Well, actually it was a good idea, just one that should have started a few weeks earlier since I don't know how to read a pattern or sew anything beyond a basic pillow. But it turned out pretty well, if I may say so myself, and I got a lot of compliments on it. No, I won't tell you what it was. Stop asking ;-) (Name that movie!)

Halloween night was one of those nights when I forget how old I am. When I forget that there are consequences to drinking copious amounts of alcohol and want to kick myself the next day for doing some pretty stupid things in front of people I really don't want to be doing stupid things in front of. When I suddenly relapse to college behavior. I pretty much made an outright fool of myself in front of my current hard-core crush and my only redeeming hope is that he was just as gone as I was and doesn't remember what an idiot I acted like. He's still speaking to me, so there's hope.

Hope. When it comes to crushes, when does hope become infatuation? Obsession? 5 months we've known each other. 5 months we've run in the same circles and seen each other all the time in groups of our friends. 5 months I've been interested. 5 months he's been friendly, but shown no romantic interest. And yet I still hold onto hope that maybe one day I'll do just the right thing or say just the right words to pique his interest and he'll want to spend time with just me. Everyone else knows I like him and thinks he'd be a great catch. When will he realize this? And why did he leave the concert tonight without even saying goodbye?

Friends, let me remind you that I am a 29-year old woman. Why, then, do I feel as if I'm behaving like a 14-year old girl? Surely I am not the only grown woman out there who goes through this kind of thing. Do you have any painful crushes or nights you'd rather just forget ever happened?