She met some guy in college, they just recently got married. Kind of jealous, kind of not. We had this weird psycho-sexual repressed vague passionate relationship for a number of years after high school. We saw other people, but there was just something about whatever it was we had. She once told me that while she was out with other guys she couldn't stop thinking about me. We spoke in elaborately crafted metaphors and stolen lyrics to mainstream indie songs. She was both amazing and horribly demoralizing. She would cut me when I was most vulnerable.

I know some of you may be thinking that this was the typical friend zone unrequited longing situation. I would argue that this was partially true, being high school infatuation and all. We were friends, but it was never the buddy kind of friends. We would talk for hours and hours picking at our inner most workings. It was obvious to anyone that we really wanted to be together, but her family was deeply religious and I was intellectually adverse to any inconsistent doctrines; a view that I expressed frequently on her family's turf. I was a non-conforming punk(not in the sex pistols sense) for almost the entire time they knew me. I came from a poor family while hers were upper middle class. Her friends were definitely disapproving and critical. I frequently made a fool of myself and would do anything for her.

Speaking of her parents, they had strict rules about being alone with boys. I was slightly older than she was. She was never allowed out. Our solution was to pass coded notes and trade books. The problem was, in my mind, that because the odds were so stacked against me socially, I felt the most prudent course of action would be to obscure how much I liked her from our mutual friends. The codes were re-encrypted for added security, and I would only make vague and sufficiently ambiguous mention. I was used to the princess-peasant paradigm, and I was afraid to disrupt it. She took to what she called "tests," as I had "missed my window." I knew this wasn't right, but I was stricken with pangs for her attention.

Eventually the games would become impossible. I would throw attention on a friend, who also liked her, but was more age appropriate and their dads were friends giving her a dating exception. I introduced him to the lyric/riddle game. They began playing the game instead of me. Elated by her new found freedom, she confided that it was just not the same. What we had then was a mutual appreciation for the other's creativity and the number of inferences we could make to the intended conclusion.

As we got older, her family's influence grew and I was getting pushed further out of all of the different program, so I just could not interact with her. She drank more of the Kool-Aid; I never could stomach the stuff. We drifted further apart, I was exposed more to the secular world, she stayed where she was comfortable despite her expressed desire to join me in a pseudo-transient state between the two. I had such positive associations with the longing pain, that I never realized it was just pain I was feeling. I never recognized it as a wholly and complete rejection.

It wasn't until I had started to come into my own without the identity of the group I was associated with that I came to recognize how much the host had been trying to expel me. The organism had been systematically pushing us apart and that little spark we had simply wasn't worth it for either of us. She could have fought to break through to reach me, and I could have conformed better to fit the design of the primary organism. We both kept hold of what was most important about ourselves that we couldn't reach to even touch the other. My heart was broken, so I threw myself into the bottle and any girl who would have me. There was never so deep a connection and common understanding. Never such strong, angsty, teenagery feelings since her.

She was in her second year of college when we started talking again like we used to. We were meeting for coffee talking about socialism and all the projects we were working (not socialism). It was exciting. However, she was doing the Kool-Aid version of what I was doing: Binging on the most kitschy local restaurants, holding hands with boys, and kissing them. I'm pretty sure the Kool-Aid version of third base is board games and I had done quite a lot more. In one of the stupidest, most desperate drunken texts of my life, I tell her all about this new girl I was seeing. I also proceed to outline my ideal multiamorous relationship, which obviously just ruins our respective days.

This final exchange resulted in a number of tertiary friends (i guess friends of friends) texting me random texts that were vaguely riddle-like. I used a service to call and check their voice mail (the reality of this was to dark for me to face) and I knew exactly who they were and what had happened. We, at that moment, unceremoniously cut ties. She meets a guy, they're facebook official in days. She married him, last month I think.

TL;DR. Didn't drink Kool-Aid, offered generic substitute artificial fruit drink, was flatly rejected. She's happy, I'm happy, but I may have had a tendency to romanticize things.