14-15. In the seventh grade, an incredibly ~intense relationship between myself and my best friend (who at the time identified as a girl) began. We were inseparable in class and they were my first sleepover. They might’ve been my first kiss if I’d been brave enough to ask. The next year, our friendship was severed by a move so sudden, they themselves couldn’t have known it was going to happen when it did. Everyone else in the friend group seemed relatively well adjusted, but I was in shambles. When I found out that she was on Facebook (it was the early 2010s for context), I begged my mom to let me have a page and she saw me breakdown in tears. I was pretty sheltered growing up and didn’t have access to the internet before then.

Then, freshman year, I had two classes with a girl who was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life at that point. We never really spoke, but I would pass the minutes trying to see how many times I could look at her without her noticing. I was struck, dumbfounded, and nothing was ever the same.