Shannon and I were getting along really well, but I was still nervous as hell to go any further with her. I was 20 years old, and still a virgin – but I knew she was ready for more.

I wasn’t ashamed of that status, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted more – not yet at least. That want would grow more and more in the months ahead, but I wasn’t quite ready.

Shannon and I lived in different cities – she was in the big smoke, and I was still living in a regional area with my parents while I went through university. The plan was to move to the big smoke to work once I graduated – so having a budding relationship to work on leading up to that day was exciting.

My biggest fear in moving would be living alone. I had never lived alone in my life, and despite being an introverted man, I knew being alone in a new city would be difficult. So Shannon was something of a light on my horizon.

I cared about her very much, and we spent weekends together whenever we could – probably two out of every four or five. I would have loved more time with her, but that’s just how things were working out. Even so, things were going well – it felt like enough for both of us at that time.

One Saturday night, I was studying late, and heard the house phone ringing – it might even have been 10pm, which was a bit unusual. It was a time when mobile phones were around, but they were an oddity rather than the norm they are today – but it was a time that calling number display was a pretty new thing.

My father literally hated with a passion answering the phone to telemarketers and spam calls, so he quickly jumped on the ability to see the number that was calling in. We soon had a phone that could show the number of the incoming caller, and our rule was that if we didn’t recognise the number, we wouldn’t answer.

I was the only one awake, so I left my bedroom to answer the phone. I looked down at the number and I panicked. It wasn’t an unknown number at all, it was a number I knew only too well.

It was Maddie’s number – well, at least it was her parent’s number – but it was Maddie’s number. I knew it upside down, backwards, and forwards.

Now, remember as far as I knew, Maddie was working overseas so it was more than a little bit of a surprise to see this number so late on a Saturday night. It was also odd because to the best of my knowledge, despite being reasonably close for all of these years, it was the first time either one of us had actually dialed the other’s number.

“Hello?” I answered nervously.

And down the line came that beautiful voice I hadn’t heard for nearly three years.

“Hi Andrew, how are you babe?”

Babe? Okay then, I smiled to myself.

“Hey! I’m well, how are you?” I replied.

My memory of that night tells me that we spoke for at least 45 minutes – just two old friends catching up after three years. I don’t even remember what we talked about, it was all just an excited blur to me.

As we got to the end of talking, she stopped and said, “Oh, I guess I should get to why I called?”

“I guess so!” I chuckled.

“It’s my 21st birthday in a few weeks, I was wondering if you’d like to come? I can’t imagine a day like that without you around!”

I thought of Shannon, and how I might explain to agreeing to go to Maddie’s birthday. I guess I could bring her along, but I just agreed to come and that I would be delighted to do so.

Which was absolutely true.

“Well, I’ll see you there – I can’t wait to see you!” she finished, and with that the phone call ended.

Awkward – but it was amazing, more than amazing to talk to her after so long. It was such a surprise given she had been away from Australia for some time, and I didn’t know she was home again.

I was really developing deep feelings for Shannon, and I’d need to find a way to bring this up with her. There was no way in the world I was going to miss Maddie’s 21st birthday. Your first love only turns 21 just once.

I felt like it was going to be okay.

Shannon didn’t seem upset at all, which I found a little bit odd. She wouldn’t be able to come with me anyway, even though I did invite her along at that first opportunity. She had come up during my conversation with Maddie, so it didn’t feel like it was going to be a big issue. However, Shannon was going to be away on a holiday she had booked before she and I had even met.

So it was going to be me and Maddie at Maddie’s birthday – probably with some other people we went to school with, and people I didn’t know at all.

I have to say, I was nervous as hell.

So many days had gone by, would things be any different? I was nervous that seeing Maddie again would trigger feelings I should probably be thinking about leaving in the past.

As I said last time, I wasn’t to see or talk to Maddie again for almost another three years.

I would hear about her from time to time – (our school keeps a great account of what people are doing in their lives) – and I knew she was actually working overseas, so even if I wanted to see her it would have been difficult to organise.

Of course, I did want to see her – but it wasn’t to be.

I also tried to move on with my life without her. It wasn’t easy to reach that point, but I needed to find a way. The Jennifer experience had burnt me last time I tried, but I was determined that I wouldn’t let her colour my view of the world.

I even found myself feeling good about being attracted to and interested in other women. Across the following four years of my university career, there were a number of women who caught my eye, and with whom some progress was made.

There was a girl named Nicole during the first year – she was fun and seemed pretty interested too, but it never got past a few goofy smiles at each other. Then a girl named Fiona popped into my life during the second year – we got along really well, and it seemed like something was actually going to happen, something serious. Until I found out she already had a boyfriend.

That one stung.

In the third year, there was a girl named Shannon. This was an emotional rollercoaster.

Shannon and I really were something. We actually met online initially, but from the moment we met face to face, there was clearly some real chemistry. While we were never sexually intimate in the 6 to 8 months we ended up being together, we would sleep in the same bed together, curled up against each other.

We did all manner of things together. It was going very well.

I hadn’t decided that I loved her, but there were definitely feelings going on inside of me that I hadn’t felt since I met Maddie.

I thought I had finally found someone and something truly special.

That final day came far too soon.

There was a great big school assembly with the entire student body in attendance. We were seated alphabetically so we could be called up one by one to get a parting gift from the school.

By surname, Maddie and I are at opposite ends of the alphabet so I didn’t get a chance to sit anywhere near her. I was in fact around people I didn’t really like at all, so it was a pretty cold hour or so, sitting so far away from her.

After that assembly, that was it. Everyone went home.

Everyone started the rest of their lives.

I don’t remember being sad as such, I just felt pretty empty. While I had several really good friends, Maddie was going to be the only one I missed.

The thing is, I had already gone through the emotional goodbye – that came the night before at our valedictory dinner.

That was a strange night. When you spend six years of high school, seeing everyone dressed in uniform, in the exact same way every day you see them, to see everyone dressed in their finest all in the same room together at the same time?

Weird.

I don’t have a lot of specific memories of that night. The memory was all about Maddie and the aura around her, rather than any particular single thing.

A bit like that first day back at school when I thought she was leaving, the evening got underway and Maddie was nowhere to be seen. It had been some weeks since the end of our final exams, so I hadn’t seen her in all of that time.

As such, I was really looking forward to seeing her, so the evening hadn’t started well. I was feeling the dark clouds approaching.

Maddie eventually showed about 20 minutes late – and it was worth the wait. I could count the number of times I had seen her out of school uniform on just my fingers.

But on this night? She looked amazing.

Her blonde hair was up and styled beautifully. She wore a black dress that I remember being just a little above her knees. Gorgeous jewellery and black high heels. Perfect makeup.

The girl I had loved for six years was not here. That night I fell in love with the beautiful woman Maddie had become. I’m smiling so hard right now as I type this, and can see that image in my mind.

It is burned into my memory. My beautiful Maddie. Many years later, I came across a picture of her from that night in a Facebook group set up for our year group.

I hold that picture so very dear.

At the end of the night, our parting words were brief. I was waiting at the front of the school for a ride home, when Maddie walked past on the way to her car.

She smiled, and just said “Goodbye Andrew.”

I smiled back, and said just a single word.

“Goodbye.”

I watched her walk into the darkness.

I wouldn’t see her or talk to her again for nearly three years.

This was the time I most relate to the beginning of my mental health issues. The thoroughly unexpected and brutal snub from Jennifer really felt like a knife in the chest.

Don’t get me wrong – while I was quite shocked that she had turned me down, with all the stories going around that she was into me, I’ve never in my life taken a turn-down from a woman as something personal. You can’t make someone love you, and if they’re not feeling it there isn’t much you can do about it.

It’s not a character flaw – something that toxic men seem to think is the case with women who say no to them. I’ve never been “that guy” and I never will be. People will only feel what they feel, no matter how hard you try to “change their minds”.

It was more how she treated me afterwards that hurt. We were never best friends, not by any measurable metric – but we would talk. It was warm, and friendly, and it felt nice.

Then she actively never spoke to me again. Was asking someone out such a horrible thing?

That was the only logical conclusion I was able to draw at the time. When I found out in later years that I had Asperger’s – (a name that isn’t really used for that form of autism spectrum disorder any longer) – it made more sense.

We are totally logical – everything has to make sense and have a black or white answer. Jennifer was being actively hurtful to me, and all I had done was ask her out to a movie. So doing that must be what made her act like this towards me.

There wasn’t any other logical explanation – at least not within my own scope of understanding. I’ve long since moved past how she made me feel, but I’ve never understood it.

As I’ve gotten older and understood myself on a deeper level, I am able to connect many thoughts and feelings together that I couldn’t do when these things were happening in my life.

At the time though – this concept that just asking her out had turned her completely against me as a person, that was my only answer. Instinctively I knew that that was no good reason for her to be so cold towards me, and it really screwed with my head all through the rest of that school year, and all through the next.

Confidence – (already a difficult thing for me) – was further damaged. I had rustled up so much courage to even ask out someone who wasn’t Maddie, that her reaction deeply fractured my mind into deeper and more complicated feelings of self-doubt.

I feel into a depression that lasted long after I finished high school. I went back to the psychologist I had seen during my early mental struggles with Maddie some years earlier. She was concerned about how my thought processes were coagulating into such a messy space.

Maddie still understood that something wasn’t quite right with me, and tried to reach out her hand to me quite a few times. We weren’t in the same class group in that final year of high school, so we weren’t around each other a lot.

We did take time to talk every now and then, and I could tell she wanted to ask why I was so down, and if there was anything she could do to help.

Maddie always understood – (and still does today) – that it was better for me to reach the emotional steps on my own, and that she or anyone else could only nudge me in the right direction. I still had to find my way there myself.

Our friendship in that final year of high school was valuable – Maddie kept me on the level by not even saying a word, but by being genuine with me. By being honest with me.

This was our last year of school together – what was I going to do after that? Unlike that first year where I had gotten this dumb idea into my head that she was leaving, this was real.

That hurt even more.

I needed Maddie more than I ever had before – but this time she really was going to slip away, and in my fragile mental state, I feared that last day would be the day she would walk away from me.

I had decided to ask Jennifer if she would like to go out some time, immediately after one of those maths classes that I both dreaded and looked forward to. The timetable left this class as the last class of the day a couple of times a week.

I thought that would be perfect.

As was usual for me, I spent a couple of weeks getting my head together and psyching myself up.

On one of the days that class we spent together fell at the end of the day, the vibe between Jennifer and I was really obvious. It put me in the right frame of mind.

I was scared shitless – I was highly self-conscious, as was usually the case – but I had found myself in the zone I thought I needed to be in.

Even the very day before, I had heard some of her closest friends telling me directly that she liked me – and that really boosted my confidence.

Her friends were telling me that!

I had also had “warnings” from others that Jennifer was something of an egotist – a vain person who made things all about herself. I had never seen that in her at all though, she just seemed really nice to me.

So – it was time.

I made sure that I followed her out of the classroom, right behind her so that I could strike up the conversation. My heart was pounding, but I was ready.

“Jennifer, hey, would you perhaps like to go and see a movie together some time?”

I was so proud of myself, I didn’t even struggle to get the words out, which was my number one fear going into this.

She stopped and looked at me with an incredulous look on her face.

“Umm, how about no?” came her response.

That hit me like a thunderbolt.

Here was this girl, who for a year and a half I had heard stories – (including the day before) – that she liked me. A girl with who would smile at me in the school yard, and who for weeks and weeks there had been an obvious chemistry.

And she blurted out this cold, brutal and almost obnoxious “no” to my question. A question I had to psych myself into even asking.

To be fair to her, she could not have known how much emotional effort I had needed to get to the point of asking her out.

But…….what?

As someone who even to this day struggles with confidence, and at sixteen on this particular day struggled even harder – this was devastating.

I withdrew deep into my shell, and I was a mess.

The only person to notice something was up was Maddie. She was the person I needed to talk to and be comforted by right now – but I couldn’t talk to her about it, because there was still this tinge of guilt from wanting to ask someone different out.

To make matters worse, Jennifer never spoke to me again. Not once, not ever. Instead of smiling at me in the school yard, she would notice me and deliberately turn around and walk the other way.

Even at school reunions in later years, there’s always at least one moment that our eyes meet, and she has this look of disdain for me in her eyes.

I didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of reaction – all I did was ask out someone who I seem to have a genuine chemistry with.

And I felt even worse about “cheating” on Maddie. I thought Jennifer might have been someone to release me from my one-track focus on Maddie.

Yet I had “picked” someone who just crushed me.

Jennifer was very different to Maddie, and I didn’t really know her.

I didn’t even remember ever being in the same room as her, yet there was an “across the school yard” attraction, and when the story started circulating that she was interested in me, she became even more interesting to me.

But I still knew nothing about her, and my heart was still very much with Maddie. Yes, Jennifer was interesting, but I still loved Maddie one hundred percent.

The end of the school year came again, and it was finally a Christmas holiday when I wasn’t heartbroken over Maddie in some way. Our rebuilt friendship was fulfilling me greatly, and while I still desperately craved being even closer to her, I wasn’t about to wreck the friendship again.

I could wait for her heart and I could wait for her love. It had been four years by now, and my feelings didn’t feel like they would ever dry up.

The new year saw Maddie and I in the same class group once again, for the second year in a row. That was exactly what I needed, and we grew our friendship further.

We had never been closer, yet we still hadn’t spoken about “us” since that day in the library the year before. I wanted to, and I could sometimes see in her eyes that she wanted to talk too.

Neither of us brought it up though.

Ever.

The thoughts and curiosity about Jennifer hadn’t really continued. There was still an attraction there, and I did see her smile at me from time to time in the school grounds. That was nice, but I was happy living in the space I was already living in.

I never made any kind of move, and neither did she.

About halfway through the year, there was a big change. Jennifer and I ended up in a maths class together, and for the first time we were around each other, interacting. There was a vibe between us that was quite distinct.

In hindsight, the fact that the stories that she liked me were still going around probably drew me in more than any real feelings I had. I did develop quite strong feelings for Jennifer, but was never sure I wanted to do anything about it.

I wouldn’t describe us as being close – far from it – but there was something there, and I was really starting to enjoy her company, and even started looking forward to the maths class, despite it being a class I was struggling with and dreaded.

A couple of months went past, and I found myself wondering if I should ask her out.

Now, in the first instance, this was a massive mental and emotional leap for me. This wasn’t Maddie. I still loved Maddie, but I found myself mesmerised by the simple chemistry Jennifer and I seemed to share.

I felt guilty as hell. I felt like I was cheating on Maddie.

But was it the right time?

As the days and weeks continued, and I got to know her more – I started to be sure that it was the right time, that it was time to allow myself that chance.

It was nerve-wracking – but I was thinking about it more and more, and thinking more and more about how I would ask her out.

I decided that it was time to try.

People were saying she liked me, yet I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I could also possibly free of this view of Maddie being the only possible holder of my heart.

What was I scared of?

I was scared of hurting Maddie.

It was interesting that despite Maddie and I both being keen to talk about everything, that we never spoke much about it for many years.

There was a time later that same year where she started flirting a little with me, but me being me, while I noticed, my low confidence came back to the surface and I didn’t act on it.

It is a definite theme in my life that I rarely have the confidence to take the first step in relationships or even potential relationships. I always need a kick in the pants to get the message.

Years later it would make a lot more sense, when one day Maddie would tell me that she always struggled with confidence too. I would never have picked that back then but looking back now it does make a lot of things that did – (and didn’t) – happen, make a lot more sense.

We spent the rest of that year as good friends – re-learning what it was we liked about each other. There was no doubt I knew what I liked and loved about her, but after not really giving her the respect she deserved, she definitely needed time to find that with me again.

I was always happy to give her all the time in the world she needed to do that. Being back in the same class group again, having to be around each other again most of the day I think helped that process a great deal.

It forced us to face the questions that needed answering, and conversely it was also the catalyst that started the rebuilding of our friendship. We never hated each other, and being around each other again all the time seemed to highlight to each other the things we still liked about each other.

I was at a position in my own heart where while Maddie was absolutely still the number one flame in that heart, there was also this feeling inside of me that our chance had come and gone. Sure, we could and would absolutely be friends again, but was a romantic relationship even ever going to be possible?

I felt that it probably wasn’t possible. I would never walk away from a chance to be with her, but I felt that too much had happened. Too much water under the bridge.

I was just happy that we were friends again – because for the best part of two years, we absolutely were not.

There was also a new girl at the school that year, a girl I found quite attractive – however, she was in another class group, and had never actually interacted with her in any way.

There was however a story going around that she liked me. I didn’t understand that at all, because although I knew who she was, I didn’t know her. How could she like someone she didn’t know?

It is however an interesting head space to find yourself in – learning that someone likes you, and then stopping to wonder why. Whether you are trying to or not, you find yourself at least asking the question. Here’s someone who supposedly likes me – what would it feel like to be with them?

I felt guilty as hell even thinking about it – my heart was well and truly locked on Maddie. Yet, here I was wondering. Parsing the thoughts in my head. I was attracted to her, so thinking it was probably natural.

It was nice to feel that someone was interested in me. For the sake of the story, we will call her Jennifer.

I never went beyond the thoughts, at least not yet. I was still waiting for Maddie to be ready to talk, so as interesting as this new girl might have been on some levels, I never let her break through the wall I had built around my heart for Maddie.

I did have to accept that the thoughts were there, and my sense was that my heart was in danger.

Quite a few months went by after that. The tension between us was gone, and the air was more or less cleared.

Nothing was spoken about any romantic feelings each of us did or didn’t have for each other. Right now, it was all about rebuilding the friendship.

Maddie wasn’t exactly jumping towards spending any specific time with me or near me, and I was still happy to just give her the time she had asked for.

The friendship was however on its way to being fixed.

We would chat from time to time and things were cool – but we were both clearly steering clear of talking about our previous conversation in the library.

Even now, all these years later – the memory of that conversation, despite it being somewhat of a stalemate discussion, sticks with me all of the time. It was the first time I had ever been brave enough and open enough to put feelings out there.

Properly.

This was the time that provided me with the second “signature” song that I hold in my heart for Maddie, a beautiful song that was extremely popular all over the world at the time, a global hit.

For me, it just hit the mood, the feeling, and the space I was in – Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting.

By legend, Marx wrote this song in 15 to 20 minutes when he was missing his soon-to-be wife, who was working on a movie on the other side of the planet. Quite literally, “oceans apart” as the song begins. I’ve also heard him talk about how a song he wrote for very personal reasons – (and which he originally wasn’t even going to record) – had become adopted to so many different people’s lives and situations, and with so many different interpretations of the lyrics.

For me, the “oceans apart” was not a physical distance, but an emotional distance.

Yes, Maddie and I had started repairing our friendship, and that was incredibly important to me – but the discussion about “where we were” had been almost ignored every day since our talk in the library.

I was as frustrated as Marx was when he tried to visit his wife where she was working, but was denied entry after flying there just to see her. They sent him home again, and he wrote the song.

One day in the second half of the year, I tried to very carefully open the conversation. I didn’t want to press it, but just wanted to make sure it hadn’t been forgotten about. I still didn’t think it was going to happen between us, but I wasn’t going to leave it to chance and not say anything ever again.

“Hey Maddie, how you doing?”, I carefully asked.

“I’m okay, but I’m not ready to talk about this”, she said, completely understanding what my question was really asking.

“I understand, I’ll be here, waiting for you, when you’re ready”, I responded, cheekily putting the song into the ethos of whatever she and I really were.

She smiled.

It was yet another new year – I felt like this was getting a bit ridiculous by now. Every year, the story kept getting held over to the new school year.

Never deliberately, fate would just awkwardly twist it that way over and over again – but this time, I was more determined to fix this than I had ever been determined about anything before. Whether Maddie even liked me – (let alone loved me) – after this was actually secondary to my thinking.

I simply had to come clean about my feelings, and just accept where that left her feeling.

I had a feeling that it would come to head pretty quickly too – since for the first time since that first year of high school, we found ourselves in the same class group. We were going to be around each other all day every day again.

It didn’t take long to get the vibe that it was coming to a head. There was a notable tension between us. There was a clear frustrated set of emotions coming from Maddie towards me, and I am pretty sure she understood the feelings of “almost” fear coming from me.

I say “almost” because I wasn’t frightened of her – not in the slightest – I still loved her every bit as much and probably more than ever before. There was however, fear regarding how she was going to respond when I came clean.

Other people were noticing the tension too. People would look at Maddie, then at me, than back at Maddie, and then back to me – and clearly have these “what the fuck is going on here?” looks on their faces.

It was becoming more and more disruptive to the class as more and more people started to pick up on the really awkward tension between Maddie and I.

This made me more and more determined to sort it out. I didn’t want this – Maddie and me – to be a disruptive influence in the class room.

I thought about re-doing the letter from the end of the previous year – remember it was written completely within the context of the end of the previous year, and wouldn’t have made sense if I just printed another copy and sent it to her now. I wouldn’t have needed to change much, if I’m honest – but I wasn’t sure it was going to be the right way to put an end to this.

Once again, I decided to just let the moment come at the right time, for the right reason.

A few weeks into the year, that moment came.

We found ourselves sitting nearby to each other in the school library one lunch break. There weren’t a lot of people around, and we’d absolutely both noted that the other was nearby.

I had been trying to just “be” nearby to her in non-classroom situations, and this was just another example of that. I guess I was just trying to engineer the encounter.

Pretending to be studying, I waited.

“Hey Andrew”, came the start of the conversation. “I think we should talk. I think we’ve both noticed the way other people are seeing us at the moment.”

“Yeah, I have”, were my first words in response. “We’ve let this drag out for far too long.”

There was a minute or two pause in the conversation. She was waiting for me to say what I needed to say, and what she deserved to hear me say. After all, it was up to me to fix my mistake – not for her to give me an easy out.

“I know I’ve said differently in the past”, I started.

“But I really do have a lot of feelings for you Maddie. I don’t know why I have lied to you so much about how I feel, and I could never tell you enough how sorry I am for how I’ve acted.”

There was a frustrated look on her face, and that confused me. I was still fairly certain she had feelings for me, so I kind of thought she would be relieved to hear those words.

I am sure she was, but the sense I was getting back was that I might have already damaged things too much – (which I believed was true) – and that I’d not picked up that before now.

“I don’t know what else to say”, I continued. “I get the feeling now that I’ve probably messed things up forever, but I glad that you know how I feel now. It’s taken me three and half years to get it out.”

“It’s a relief, but I can’t say anything more, or ask anything of you. I’ve been a dickhead.”

There was a good five minutes pause this time. I was trying to read her body language, but wasn’t picking much up.

Finally she spoke.

“You’re not a dickhead Andrew. I’ve always appreciated that you were a shy kind of guy, and I’ve always known that you care about me.”

My heart was pounding.

“I just need some time to take this in, and decide how I feel”, she said.

“I need to decide what do I do now?”

Those final words took me a little by surprise, and it wasn’t long until the first bell for the end of lunch went to move onto the next class.

Surprised because it didn’t say “no, no way Andrew”. She’d left the question open as to whether anything could or would happen from there – and I absolutely wasn’t expecting that.

Maddie reached out her hand to mine, and holding it gently said, “let’s talk soon, but just give me some time.”

I wanted to say “take all the time you need Maddie, because I love you” – but that probably wasn’t the best thing to say right at that moment. I smiled at her, nodded, and tried to say it with my eyes.

I walked away feeling okay, but my pulse was racing, and my head was spinning. Maddie finally knew for sure that I loved her, and that was a buzz – but I was scared out of my mind because I didn’t know what was coming next.

We didn’t speak about it for several months after that – but she asked for time, so I was giving her all the time she needed to process the situation.

Being pretty sure that she still had feelings for me, I was encouraged – but I still thought I had done too much damage, and that we needed to work on being friends again. The previous year had been difficult for our friendship.

I wasn’t about to push too much and strain it further.

I would let the situation progress naturally, and see where we ended up. I was in no hurry, and was happy to allow all the needed time to pass by.

Because I loved her.