One of the most interesting people I have ever met was a man who, in his youth, was a member of a prominent Latino gang in Chicago; to escape this lifestyle, he later joined the police force.  Of course, by the time I met him, he was no longer a gang banger or a police officer, but simply an intimidatingly large Puerto Rican  man with a gun, and when I was 13, I was completely in love with his daughter…

Her name was Anya, and she was beautiful; the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.  Her beauty however, was not what made her special.  Of course I first noticed her because of it, but truth be told, we were so different in every way that I actually disliked her when we first met in school.  She was the new girl, and unusually attractive, so all the other boys fell all over each other to get her attention and gain her favor while I pretty much dismissed her and she, for a time at least, despised me for not only being immune to her charms, but also openly mocking her on occasion.  It turned out that she lived in the apartment across the hall from my best friend and had become friends with his sister, so much to my dismay, she and I frequently found ourselves hanging out in the same apartment.  Somehow though, over time we came to realize that what we actually disliked about each other was that we truly saw each other.  What we had in common was an ability to see through the elaborate outward personas that only twelve-year-olds are capable of, because of a deep understanding of ourselves and the realities of life most kids our age were completely ignorant of; because of that bizarre similarity that transcended social norms and adolescence, resentment slowly turned into adoration, and we became the best of friends.

After a time we became inseparable, and even shared an uncanny and almost extrasensory intuitive bond.  As puberty and middle school progressed that friendship grew into a kind of love that few people in this world will ever be lucky enough to experience.  Ironically, we never became boyfriend-girlfriend as it were.  We even “dated” other people (if you can call middle school relationships dating) while all the while sharing intimate moments with each other that were more physically, and emotionally satisfying than anything people our age should have been capable of.  It was an almost tragic case of bad timing; we understood even then that the exquisiteness of what we shared was beyond our years and therefore impossible for us to fully appreciate.  We spoke of that very feeling only once and chose not to dwell on the delicacy of our enchantment for fear of hastening its inevitable end, but instead tried to enjoy each other as much as possible.

Just before the beginning of our freshman year of high school, her family moved away, and although we stayed in touch for some time after, eventually the challenges of life’s brutal realities became too much.  We slowly fell out of touch, and when we finally reconnected years later we found that, while what we shared still lingered in our hearts and minds, we had both sadly lost the deliberate innocence that had allowed our bond to outshine what the world knows as love.  We parted as more than friends, but less than lovers and although I have never thought of her as, “the one that got away” there is a part of me that will forever mourn the loss of what may prove to be the greatest romantic love of my life…