I could write a million words or more about Maddie.
It would probably take at least that many words to process my way through my feelings for her, and even then I would probably have left a lot out.
It’s complicated. Very complicated.
It would be easy enough to just say “I love her”, and leave it at that, but it’s just not that simple. Absolutely, I love her – but the shape of that love is varied, and colourful, and in many ways impossible to put into words.
But I’m going to try – and try and avoid a million words!
Maddie is a country girl, who moved to nearby my home town some months before we met. I don’t actually know if she and her family moved to support their choice of school for her, or whether their choice of school was based on the move.
Regardless, her parents and my parents chose the same school.
I only remember meeting her on the first day of Year 7 – and instantly I noticed her. I may have “subconsciously” met her a few months earlier at what our school called “placement tests” – deciding roughly which students went into which class groups together – and maybe whatever faint memory I had of her from those tests stuck with me – but I don’t remember noticing her that day.
All I know is that the day before the start of high school, girls were “icky”. That silly boy thing, where we think girls are just “girl germs”. I had no idea what would happen that next day. I was changed for the rest of my life.
On that following day, I remember seeing her and being mesmerised. I was 11 years old, and absolutely had no idea what I was feeling, but certainly girls no longer had germs!
She was beautiful, that was the word I chose right from the start. She really was, at least to me.
I do know that for at least the first month or two, I described my feelings for her to myself as a “crush” – that was the only word that made sense to me, and the word I used to write about her with too.
That word changed to “love” pretty quickly. I loved her. The words my inner voice used were “I love Maddie.”
Was it really love? I doubt it, but it was how I felt that I felt at the time – so the words and the feelings were valid.
I certainly didn’t tell anyone how I felt about her.
As a shy and introverted kid who came from a primary school situation of being constantly bullied, putting my feelings out wasn’t something that I was used to doing, and though in no way was I embarrassed about my feelings for her, I was scared of people knowing and reacting badly.
So many years later, that sounds silly – but that’s how my head functioned at that time. I was so completely used to holding things inside for my own protection, that it became almost a default behaviour to hide how I felt.
Despite keeping the feelings to myself, those first few months were a beautiful time. I could come to school every day and not be bullied, and I could come to school every day and see Maddie. I’m even smiling as I type these words, almost 40 years later.
I remember sitting in a class early one morning – a cold morning, light rain having just stopped, water dripping off the trees outside, but with sunlight shining through too. It was a beautiful visual.
It was a small class of only about 10 people, and Maddie was sitting directly across the table from me.
We were just staring into each other’s eyes and smiling. I can close my eyes right now and still see that image perfectly. Just this magical little moment between us. It probably meant something, but at the time I completely missed any message she was trying to send to me.
Picking up messages has always been difficult to me. Many years later when my first and only child was diagnosed with ASD, and the pediatrician was explaining that diagnosis, I recognised that the very symptoms and behaviours that were being described about my own child were exactly “me” back when I met Maddie.
Missing signals, not being empathetic to the non-verbal signals that people are giving off. Scared of expressing feelings openly, which would then sometimes explode out through frustration later.
I even missed the signal they day she said “I love you” to me, and spent the next few weeks putting out signals and messages which to most other people would have been obvious.
I saw them. I felt them. I loved the way they made me feel.
Yet, though it probably seems strange, I didn’t understand the messages. I was almost outside of my body, looking in – like watching a romantic movie. A romantic movie that I had no context available to me which could have, or even would have made me understand the story.
She probably gave up suspecting that I wasn’t interested.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Over the six years of high school, our relationship changed a lot. At times were we good friends, and at other times we were anything but. There were times I tried to express my feelings, and made horrible messes of it. She even expressly said to me one day “I hate you”.
A big change from “I love you” – but I actually deserved it at the time. I had not respected her anywhere near as much as I should have, particularly with respect to my feelings, which I am now sure she knew that I had.
It was a difficult time, and an awkward time – but eventually we worked it out and became friends again. Different, but friends again.
In the years since high school, we have spent long periods of time out of touch. We have spent time living near to each other, and very far apart from each other – but time and time again the friendship has shown to endure.
I’ve lived and loved and had other relationships. Some good, some bad. One good enough to have a child within, even though my son and his mother and I are no longer together. We are also still good friends – the friendship never died between us, just the romance.
The thing is, every time I found myself single over the years, Maddie would return to my heart. She has an – (almost!) – annoying habit of popping up in my life when I need her.
But despite the love and affection, in almost 40 years we’ve never found ourself “together”. There’s a lot of love, even today.
We have never really spoken about it either – but whenever she’s been single, I haven’t been. Whenever I’ve been single, she hasn’t been.
If we’ve both been single, neither of us were in any emotional state to be in a relationship with anyone, let alone each other.
In many many ways, I should have moved on a long time ago – but I’ve never gotten her out of my system – and despite how much I love her, sometimes that love truly hurts.
Time and time again she shows me just what an amazing friend and support she can be. Maybe that goes way back to the first year of high school when she did say “I love you” – and she never got me out of her system either.
Maybe.
(note: Richard Marx is going to pop up a lot in the music I relate to Maddie – he’s been something of a “spirit animal” to me over the years – his lyrics often speak very personally to me.)