It is all a massive blur. A painful, messy, confusing and emotional blur.

“Andrew, I’ve heard a few people suggest that you really like me?”

I was frozen in fear.

“No, where did you hear that?”

Even now, all these years later, hearing myself say those words makes me disconnect from myself.

Why?

Why did I say that?

I can hear the ringing in my ears again.

I couldn’t understand what had just happened. I had spent a couple of months building myself up, psyching myself up for this moment.

I was nervous, but confident that if I could just “leap off that cliff”, that regardless of Maddie’s response – good, bad, or otherwise – that things would be okay.

All I had to do was tell her that yes, yes I really liked her.

I didn’t even have to use the word “love” – I just had to walk through the door she might open for me, and see what was inside.

But I froze, and I had basically denied the feelings that I was truly trying to express.

To this day, I still don’t understand how those words came out my mouth.

It was fear, definitely – but I felt that I had overcome that fear, that I was ready to be afraid, to be brave and face those fears, and finally – maybe – allow what could possibly be, to actually be.

She seemed just as confused. The end of that brief conversation felt awkward and wrong.

I walked away in a daze, and I felt broken within myself.

Here I was, ready to unlock that door and walk inside – and all I had done was walk up to the door, pressed the doorbell and run away.

I felt worthless, I felt like a fake. It was a Friday, and I went home and cried for most of the weekend.

Maybe I could get through that weekend, get myself together, and fix it on Monday?

She deserved an honest heart, and I had let her down. The overwhelming emotion was that she knew I was lying.

It felt like she had seen right through me.

What could I do?

It might have been easy enough for me to decide it was time that Maddie needed to know how I felt about her, but finding a way to make that happen was…………..less easy.

I had never openly expressed my love for her before, and even though she had apparently tried to tell me that she loved me the previous year, I had absolutely no idea how to go about it.

Words were simple to find, but impossible to say. I just wanted to tell her that I loved her, and see where that left me.

I know that sounds like a low expectation of a potential outcome, but I couldn’t see beyond the first step. I had zero experience of this, and didn’t know what could possibly come after that.

I just needed her to know.

I didn’t overthink it too much for the first few weeks of the new school year. It was on my mind, but I was just getting my head around the fact that she hadn’t left, and was just enjoying seeing her again.

I needed to get my head straight first, then come up with a plan.

When the time came to get a bit more serious about it, I spent some weeks turning various ideas over in my mind.

Do I just walk up to her and tell her? No, no courage for that.

Do I just call her at home one night? Also not enough courage for that.

Could I write her a love letter and try and serenade her a little, and then tell her who was writing the words to her? I thought about that option long and hard, but I eventually decided that it might come across as a bit cowardly – it was incredibly tempting though.

The idea of carefully crafting some words and making such a letter just perfect and being able to carefully plan what I wanted to say was almost the trigger to do it that way.

It wasn’t what I ended up choosing, but when I reflect on this time now in 2024 – I kind of wish that this was the path I chose, it might very well have worked out much better.

In the end, I decided to take a leaf out of Maddie’s own book. She had tried to get my attention by asking my friends how I felt about her, by putting the word out that she liked me.

So I decided to do the same. I thought she would appreciate that I felt doing the same would be something of a bonding gesture. That picking up where she left off would somehow reconnect her emotions to where they were that day almost a year before.

I spent a couple of more weeks psyching myself up, figuring out what I would say to people, who I would say things to. Deciding who I could trust to deliver the right messages to her.

I carefully watched for some days for who she mostly hung around with during the day at school – they would be the people who would pass the “message” along to her the fastest, and would be people she would trust to receive such a message from.

I started with a list of four or five people who seemed to be the closest to her, and started dropping hints around them, and around people those four or five were regularly around – one degree of separation if you like.

I didn’t go for the “sledgehammer” method by saying things like “tell Maddie I love her” – I thought that would be far too direct. I just made sure I talked about Maddie around them, and gave the impression that I really liked her.

Which was completely true, of course.

My observation was that it was working – I remember seeing a friend of hers that I had probably concentrated on a bit more than others, talking to Maddie in the school yard one day, and having her look up towards me. It seemed that I was the topic of conversation.

Now I just had to wait, and see if Maddie came to me. I felt so scared about what I was doing, but there was some confidence in me due to her having told me she loved me previously – I was at least interesting to her on some level.

I was still terrified.

When she did come to me about it, that’s when my world fell apart. All I had to do was follow her lead when she asked if I liked her. One word would have been enough.

“Yes…”

However, that’s not what happened.

I made sure I got to school early that next day. I wanted to wait out the front like I had often done the previous year, just to see her.

I wanted to see her at the earliest possible moment. I made sure I looked my very best – made sure my shirt and tie were perfect. No flecks of fluff or anything else on my blazer.

I stood and I waited.

Experience showed that when she was dropped off at school, it was around 8:25am – maybe a little later, maybe a little earlier.

When 8:35am had come and gone, I was getting nervous. I was confident she was coming back after her best friend had told me so – but what if she was still sick and it would be another day?

This was the moment I really started to understand how much I cared for her.

Yes, it started with a crush.

Yes, it moved to be love – at least in my understanding.

Then it was pain, and now she was sick.

All I wanted to do was be there for her, and look after her. To care for her, and support her. It was absolutely the first loving feeling I had for her beyond that simple schoolboy lust that it quite possibly was before this day.

I needed her to be there so I could be there for her. That she was sick affected me emotionally.

A few minutes later, I finally saw her mother’s car pull up on the far side of the road opposite the school.

My heart fluttered, and I suddenly got very nervous.

After having believed so confidently that she was gone forever, this was almost like meeting her again – but this time knowing who I was about to meet.

Our eyes locked as she approached the front gate, and she smiled that amazing smile that has always made me melt.

It wasn’t really all that long ago that she’d tried to tell me that she loved me – maybe she was still feeling that way? The smile was very warm.

We didn’t say anything to each other as she passed – we didn’t need to. I think our smiles said enough to each other. I know I was over the moon to see her, and she certainly seemed pleased to see me too.

I was still bummed that we weren’t in the same class group as each other – so I wouldn’t get to see her all day like I said during that first year. But at least I would see her every day, and at least we would have a chance to interact again.

Only a few more moments passed that morning, before I made a decision.

I had hated how I had felt over those holidays. Brokenhearted and lonely, and I knew if I ever had to feel that way over Maddie ever again, she would know how I felt.

She had to know now. I had to tell her. I needed her to see.

I didn’t know how I was going to tell her – but I never wanted to feel that way ever again. I had to find a way.

As it would turn out, however – it would not go well.

Now was the time, now was the moment – but now was when it all started to go wrong.

As you can well imagine, for weeks I was dreading going back to school and not finding Maddie. I believed in my heart that that was what was going to happen. I would return on the first day of the new school year, and Maddie would not be there.

I’ve obviously described in previous posts that it was utterly ridiculous that I thought she was gone – but as I believed it at the time, that’s how I had prepared myself. To press on without her in my life, no matter how much it hurt.

And on that first day back, that’s how it appeared to be.

Maddie was nowhere to be found.

She really was gone.

I looked around the sea of faces waiting to go inside for the first assembly of the year, and there was no Maddie.

She was not there.

The mental prison I had locked myself into for weeks and weeks had turned out to be my reality. I had lost Maddie.

I was devastated – even though I had believed she was leaving, and had lived my life in my head as if she were, there was still a wishful hope in the back of my head that I was wrong.

But I wasn’t wrong. The day had come and Maddie was gone, and it took all of my strength not to cry.

That first assembly began, and the new class lists were being read out. I was listening for my name so I knew which class group I had been assigned, but I was otherwise disconnected. My head was filled with thoughts of Maddie and how horrible it felt to know that she was gone.

Right near the end, I heard something that shocked me. It hit me so hard, that it felt like I had been shot. My ears started ringing and I felt the room spinning.

Maddie’s name was read out.

Not in the same class group as me, but her name was read out.

I anxiously started scanning the room for her beautiful face. I was fortunate that I had sat pretty near the back of the hall, so turning and looking everywhere wouldn’t have looked too weird.

But I couldn’t find her anywhere in that room. They read out her name, but she was definitely not there.

Now, was it a mistake? Had they left her on the enrollment by mistake? Was she just absent today?

Suddenly I had a flicker of hope.

But she wasn’t there the next day either, or the third day.

The flicker of hope was there, but it must just have been a mistake, and the pain remained.

On that third day, I drew up as much courage as I could and asked Maddie’s best friend where she was – that she’d been read out in that first assembly, but that she was nowhere to be seen.

“Maddie? Oh, she’s home sick, she should be back tomorrow.”

Then there was that ringing in my ears and totally disconnected feeling again. I must have looked like a complete idiot standing there in a daze.

I don’t know how long it took me to regain my composure, but I was in an amazing headspace – confused, but happy.

Very happy.

She was coming back. Tomorrow.

I don’t remember a lot about the final week of school that year.

As before, it was a bit of a blur while I was taking the chance to be near Maddie as much as possible. I would loiter nearby as much as possible. I would try and be involved in conversations if I could be. As much as I wanted to gather up as many memories of her as possible, I wanted Maddie to have memories of me too.

After all, she was “leaving” – and apparently might even love me. That’s what she had said, right?

The thing is that I still wasn’t aware in my own mind of how stupid my belief that she was leaving was. I was so completely virgin to having feelings for someone, that I didn’t know better. Looking back with hindsight, I can see that it was just easier to process my complete misunderstanding of my feelings and how she might feel about me in this crazy way.

I was heartbroken. I shouldn’t have been, but I was.

That final week was painful – even if I can’t remember many details about it, all these years later.

I do remember the final moments.

I caught a school bus home that day, and I found that I was the only passenger on that trip. I sat at the back so that I could look out the back window in the hope of getting one final glimpse of the girl I was convinced that I loved.

Fate held it its hand to me, and as the bus moved away from the school, Maddie appeared at the front gate with a group of her best friends. I watched and watched and watched as the bus carried on, with Maddie walking away in the other direction.

I watched until she was but a tiny dot in the distance.

She was gone, and my heart fell to pieces.

Once again looking back I know there was no reason for me to believe that I would never see her again, or that she was leaving the school – but the symbolism of her walking away in the other direction underlined it for me.

She was not only gone, but she was walking away from me.

I had never loved someone before, and now I was feeling my first broken heart.

That first year of high school had progressed from believing that girls were “germs”, to meeting a beautiful girl, to finding I had a crush on her, then discovering that I believed that I loved her, and now to losing her and having a broken heart.

It’s probably a story that’s happened a million times in a million lives around the world – but it was all new to me.

The school holidays were difficult – really difficult. I don’t feel that I was in a depression, not like I have discovered in later years in my life.

But I was in pain, I was hurting, and I was terribly sad.

Every Christmas my family went on a month long beach holiday during January, before returning home to get ready for a new school year in February – and I was dreading going back and her not being there.

We would drive to the beach for our holidays, and I knew that we would pass through Maddie’s home town on the way. I was dreading that too, because I recognised that it was probably going to be an emotional journey.

I was already thinking about her almost all the time, but passing through that town was going to underline the emotion.

There are a lot of songs I have collected up and related to Maddie over 40 years. Songs that match specific things that have happened. Songs that match specific feelings that I have had. Songs that match how I wanted things to go in the future.

Two in particular are my “theme songs” for my love for Maddie – and that day, the first was chosen.

I was already really enamored with this particular song, and it was quite popular at the time – I had already related it to how it made me feel to Maddie. As we got there my heart sank as I expected it would, but the universe reached out and played that song for me in exactly that moment.

We were on our way to a beach paradise, but I had lost the paradise of Maddie from my heart.

The days and weeks following on from her expression of love for me really laid the foundations of my understanding of my mental health and understanding of who I was as a person.

Of what I wanted and needed for myself.

Not that Maddie caused my mental health issues – absolutely not. She was absolutely the shining light in my heart and in my soul that got me through every single day.

No – this was the time I started to learn about myself. My brain twisted itself into some pretty ridiculous positions. Hearing her try and express a love for me turned me inside out. I never expected to feel so confused about love.

Yes it was the first time I had ever had feelings for someone – so I guess it makes sense on one level that I didn’t know how I would process it. However, never in a million years were some of the things that happened both inside my head and in the real world on the road ahead expected.

Maddie has never broken my heart in nearly 40 years – but I’ve broken my own heart over her a number of times.

This was the first time.

Some of what I am about to write about has come about from time I have spent with psychologists in later years – talking about her and about myself. Trying to learn and understand.

I am an internaliser and an over-processor. I contort my understanding of complicated issues into simple streams of thought to escape those complications and that pain. I beat myself up over choices I have made – and choices I haven’t made.

Ridiculous scenarios form in my head when my brain tries to find simple ways to cope with things that might otherwise rip me to pieces.

I have always talked to myself a lot – sometimes I am the only person who will listen to me. Certainly, I find myself agreeing with myself most of the time – but when that over-processing appears, I get myself pretty messed up.

I can count three mental breakdowns over my life – but as complicated as this period of time was inside my head, this wasn’t one of those times.

But the “plan” my brain came up with?

Insane.

While Maddie telling me that she loved me was a precious moment in my life, as previously described I wasn’t able to process that voice from her.

Interacting with her become somewhat more awkward than it had been previously. Not to the point of being unable to talk to her, but it wouldn’t take long for me to start trying to re-process her words, and it was difficult to spend anything more than a few minutes with her at a time before I would overload.

How did my brain deal with it?

Somewhere the idea that she was leaving the school got into my head. There was no evidence of this, she had never said that she was, but that’s the headspace that developed.

When talking with psychologists in later life about this, those I have spoken with all came to the same conclusion – that I subconsciously invented it to deal with the pain of knowing how she felt, and not having any idea of how to deal with it.

So the end of that first year of high school was excruciating for me. I was “preparing” for her departure from the school. I was brokenhearted and I was feeling the grief one would expect to feel over losing the one that they loved.

As the final school day of the year got closer and closer, I struggled more and more. I tried to push myself to spend as much time around her – close to her, but not too close – so that I would have as many memories as possible before she “left”.

I was convinced that I would never see her again – which was plainly stupid.

Even if she really was leaving, I knew where she lived, and I knew her phone number. Even if she was leaving, I could just pick up the phone and talk to her any time.

Of course, that would have been emotionally very difficult for me to do, but you get my point.

Those last weeks were hell, and there were many voices playing in my head.

Maddie was the clearest voice – and I was desperately trying to find a way to connect in the short time I thought we had left.

We had to find a way to connect our love – at least, that’s what I thought we needed.

We had to make ends meet, before we got much older.

That first year of knowing and adoring Maddie in many ways was fantastic. In many ways it was complicated and in some ways, depressing.

I knew how I felt about her – (at least as much as a 12-year-old could know) – and seeing her every day was a joy.

I have always struggled with my mental health over the years, and this is a time I can start to trace my struggles back to. I was painfully shy, completely lacking in confidence, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to interact with Maddie on any personal level.

We were friends, absolutely – but expressing myself beyond that was impossible. Telling her how I felt was something that just wasn’t going to happen – I didn’t know how to – and at that time, in its own way, that was okay.

I was comfortable within myself to love her from a distance. Anything more than that was utterly terrifying.

So the day that she told me she loved me was an immensely confusing moment in my life.

I was sitting on a bench seat preparing for the next class nearing the end of lunch one day when I saw her approaching. As always I smiled – just to have a moment with her, any moment, was fantastic.

As she passed, simply said “I love you Andrew”…and kept walking. She turned her head back at me as she continued on, and flashed her amazing smile.

I left my body.

This probably sounds silly, but I mentally and emotionally disconnected from reality at that moment. I heard her, it made me feel amazing – but it registered in my brain in such a way that it didn’t seem real.

I had heard her, but I didn’t hear her.

That thing that just happened? It didn’t just happen.

It would have been so easy to respond that I loved her too – but I didn’t have the emotional ability to even recognise what she was saying, let alone find any way to respond. It wasn’t even scary like I had thought telling her how I felt might be like.

It just didn’t register beyond the words.

Almost 40 years later, I can close my eyes and picture that moment perfectly.

It is imprinted.

Over the coming few weeks, there were other messages that I missed too. Like deliberately telling someone that she really liked me when I was within earshot – just so I would hear it.

Asking a friend of mine to try and ask me what I thought of her. I fumbled that one too.

It all seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

It wasn’t to me. All this time later I feel like a complete fool about those few weeks. Maddie was trying to tell me she loved me, and despite what should have been obvious messages, I missed them all.

I’m shaking my head even as I type these words. Why would she love me?

I was a fool. The king of fools.

The day Maddie came into my life was a magical day, but I have to admit that I don’t remember anything specific about that very first day. Not specific things that were said, nor specific things that happened.

It was just about her, but the detailed memories just aren’t there – they are just vague and disjointed.

The feeling – however – is clear and strong. I was amazed by her, and I couldn’t wait to see her again the next day.

It was complicated enough to be starting high school, and putting other things behind me – that meeting her and trying to understand why I couldn’t keep my eyes off her made it a whirlwind of a day.

It wasn’t just the way she looked either – though I thought she was just beautiful. There was something about her that drew me too her. Did my subconscious mind already know that she would be a part of my life, probably for the rest of it?

Did that possible understanding just link us together forever? Was this that “love at first sight” thing?

I don’t know. I’m not sure I even believe in that stuff – but there’s not a doubt that she deeply affected me from the start.

She still does.

Before long – we were off to an orientation school camp, and it was there I began to notice that maybe there were feelings coming back the other direction from her.

I say maybe, because – (as will be a common theme through this entire site) – I am truly spectacularly bad at picking up signals and messages from women.

I look back right now at a single interaction on that camp – with the benefit of almost 40 years of hindsight. I can see her wanting to talk to me, perhaps about having feelings for me too – because as I close my eyes and picture it now, I can see the smile on her face, and the sparkle in her eyes.

She looks interested.

We were definitely caught in a moment where a lot more could have happened – the mood was there, and despite having quite a few other people around us, that moment was a single connection between herself and me.

A powerful moment that still makes me smile, even if I didn’t know what I was seeing at the time.

Then there was the classroom moment I spoke about in the last post – all of this was within the first few weeks of knowing each other.

Once again with hindsight, there was a connection between us – and before long I believe that I understood inside myself that I was in love – a crush at first, and then love.

I wanted to know everything I could find out about her – my shyness prevented much of that, but I tried as best I could.

We were absolutely friends – I tried whenever it was possible to sit as close to her as possible in classes.

I thought about her all the time. It was also a time I was discovering music, and started relating songs to her. The song I have chosen for this post below – although not even her name – (real or made up for this website) – was new at the time, and as beautiful as she was. I would just change the name in my head whenever I heard it.

I had found my Maddie, and there I was never going to find another girl like her.

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.)