All right, so nobody plans on it. It just sort of happens. There’s no question it did happen, for if you can’t read the signals your body is giving you, like loss of appetite, shortness of breath, cold clammy hands, a sense of euphoria alternating with a sense that you ate a bad oyster at lunch, then somebody else close to you will. They’ll ask you why you can’t seem to complete sentences, and how come you light up the wrong end of your cigarette and stare off into space, occasionally mumbling to yourself. But you already know. You have fallen hard for somebody, and she simply refuses to return the feeling.
Welcome to the wild, crazy, hots-up world of the unrequited lover. Nobody is ever going to talk you out of it either. If somebody thinks he can, he’s either ignorant or stupid. Only you can deal with it. Here’s how.
We already know that nothing you can possibly do will make this other person come around and declare infinite love for you, so the only option left until this hormonal imbalance wracking your body normalizes is to adopt an attitude, a stance towards the objet d’amour that will allow you to cope. Two of my favorites are rationalization and dadaism.
If you are a mild case, rationalization (hereafter referred to as the “Big R”) will do the trick (after all, we’ve already ascertained you can’t turn the trick). With “Big R,” you can readily convince yourself that really, after all, this person you crave is probably not meant for you, that there is no common ground for a day-to-day understanding. If that is not true, then the tragedy of the situation is that you are perfect for each other, so you can use the “Big R” to conclude that the one you love is an imbecile and hopeless bed wetter. Smooth, clear-eyed, logical reasoning works wonders. No, of course not, you say to yourself. What we have here is a mongoloid with the sensitivity of novocain-the ideal candidate for a total lobotomy.
If you are not a mild case, this sort of attitude may not quite mitigate the circumstance that you may love the person, despite the fact that the person is an imbecilic, bed wetting, insensitive mongoloid lobotomy outpatient with no common ground for day-to-day understanding. In this case, you may wish to consider dadaism. In dadaism, you may feel completely free to express yourself. You can make an exquisite display of your feeling for the one who does not care for you, without the fear that the other person realizes the reason you walk up to her and set fire to her hair has any connection to your impulsive love for her. Believe me, when the one you love walks outside her dwelling one fine spring morning and trips over a Hefty trash bag containing fifteen gallons of water and fifteen live African piranhas, unrequited love and invisible you is not an association she’s likely to make.
As a hopeless romantic, you can see you have two possible ways of dealing with your situation. If you are the calm, cerebral type, give the “Big R” a shot. If you lean a little to the theatrical side, dadaism is a sure and proven crowd pleaser. I have, of course, tried both in different situations and have found both rather effective in dissipating personal pain. If you do decide to go the dadaist route, however, make sure that purchase of unnatural wildlife is tax deductible in your precinct. No need to lose money over this deal. You’ve already lost just about everything else.
Lagoon Boy 
Might there be a third alternative that you could elaborate on?
Ipswich fried clams.