Unrequited love taught me the exquisite pain of yearning

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My first day of grade one was a nightmare.

I was headed to a brand new school. Being a teeny tiny undiagnosed autistic girl - change was harrowing for me. My parents walked me to class that chilly early September morning. I held both their hands while I sobbed pitifully all the way there. To make matters worse, they dropped me off in this alien environment. I felt such a deep pang of betrayal - where was I, and how could I escape? And to ensure that it was a calamitous day worthy of becoming a core memory, a gangly boy named Callum* took notice of my vulnerability and started chasing me around the room like I was a prey animal. He eventually clobbered me and I fell to the floor, smashing my little face and bloodying my nose. The teacher had to stuff tissues up my nostrils while tilting my head back for the first hour of class. I mean, this was the late 80s, ok? There I was, propped on her leg like a bloody puppet while she read from a storybook. None of the kids were looking at the book - they were staring at me.

Worst day ever.

But my second day of grade one more than made up for it. As it turns out, bloody noses can be healed - but being struck by Cupid’s arrow lasts forever.

He was a new kid. He was told to sit opposite me at the laminate and metal desks that had been pushed together in groups of six. The morning light flooded in, obscuring his features but causing a massive halo around him. I remember that halo like it was yesterday. Sparkly, yellowish, soft wispy fingers of light emanated from the top of his head like curious little light snakes reaching up to sniff the fresh air. He was an angel sent just for me. I knew in that moment that I was in love. Well, no - that’s untrue. I didn’t know what romantic love was…I was 5. But I felt something powerful move through me that fateful morning, and I’d never be the same again.

His name was Jacob.* He was born one day before me and, despite having brown eyes instead of green, we were twins. Raven hair, a smattering of freckles, cute button noses, considerably smaller than the rest of the children. People thought we were related. I was proud of this, as I thought it would make him realize that we were soulmates. We never walked to school together because he was always a little bit more of an early riser, but I recognized his footsteps in the snow. I was a pint-sized private eye, taking keen notice of any evidence of him. His gait was a little pigeon-toed, meaning his feet turned a little inward. We lived in a small town - so even if there were a few other sets of boot prints in the freshly fallen morning powder, I’d immediately know which ones were his. I loved signs of his existence - his handwriting on the chalkboard amongst all the others sent a little thrill through me, his plaid shirt hanging on the coatrack, his empty chair in the classroom. Things that had touched him.

We became good friends. I’d go over to his house to play Nintendo and we’d build forts out of tree branches in an empty lot nearby. He’d help me with math, which was becoming a self-evident learning disability, and I’d help him with art. A tomboy from the outset, I’d more or less assimilated and was just ‘one of the boys.’ Not only did I feel like I belonged there, I also wasn’t aware that there was any other way I should be. I didn’t know that being ‘one of the boys’ was a curse - especially if ever I wanted to step out of yearning into anything tangible. But thankfully, to my very nascent yet palpitating heart, I didn’t understand what ‘tangible’ would even entail. I’d heard of kissing of course, and kids being boyfriend/girlfriend - but I never considered that I should desire this myself.

That all changed one day during recess, deep in the bright void of winter. We had been out playing in the snow. Afterward, in our snowsuits, we plopped down and made little snow angels. When we sat up, Jacob noticed there were a few flakes perched on the tip of my nose. He reached out and gently poked them with his index finger while looking into my eyes. The moment was so tender - it happened in cinematic slow motion. The world fell away, and it was just us and this incredibly kind, curious contact. I think I knew then that ‘tangible’ was something I liked very much - but I was content to let things be as they were, as my inner world had become so enriched with his very presence. Each and every day I’d be given more gifts sweetness to squirrel away in the ever-growing forest of my love. He just existed, and that was enough.

I quietly and patiently held onto this sweet little flame. It was a private joy, a softness, a distinct pleasure amongst all of the strangeness of school life. It gave me a sense of meaning and motivation. I had no notion of possession or jealousy or even wanting him to be mine - that is, until someone else made their feelings tangible and stole Jacob away from me.

Her name was Kim.* She arrived to our school in grade three. A few months in, we all went on a class trip. On the ride back that afternoon, I was sitting near the front of the bus and heard the chitter chatter of child gossip make its way through the crowd like a staccato wave of birdsong. Someone whispered in my ear, Jacob and Kim are…sleeping…together….!!!! I stood up on my seat to see. And indeed - Jacob (still shorter than average) was resting his head on Kim’s shoulder, and she, in turn, rested her head on his head. It was quite the scandal. My heart raced for reasons I couldn’t understand or explain. All I knew was that this was somehow very wrong, and it disrupted my world entirely.

The quiet joy I had been nurturing for two whole years twisted and gnarled into exquisite pain. When Kim rooted herself in the fertile earth I’d been tilling everything changed. I realized then that I did want Jacob to be mine. I did have notions of possession and jealousy. I was devastated that he had chosen someone else - this snub-nosed, broad-shouldered, mousy-haired stranger.

Later on that year, we were told by our teacher that we’d be putting on a school play about a dragon that tries to destroy a medieval castle. I tried out for the part of the queen, hoping desperately that Jacob would be my king and all would be right in the world again. Instead, Jacob and Kim got cast as king and queen, and I was their daughter, the goddamned princess. Never did any little girl wish less that she was a princess. I’d also made a fatal mistake that halfway through that grade - I’d cut my waist-length hair to a short pixie. I saw a photo in a magazine of a (fully grown, exquisitely beautiful) woman with that same haircut and naive little me thought, yeah for sure I’ll look exactly like that! My dreams were dashed and divided the moment I stepped out of the salon. At a crosswalk, an old woman stopped my mom and I to admire what a lovely looking boy I was. I also knew the mistake was fatal when, the following day, Jacob ruffled my hair and said, nice new do! It was hopeless. Not only was I now a boy in his eyes, I was also somehow his royal daughter.

My mom became my after school therapist, bless her soul. I needed someone to vent my romantic frustrations to. I became emotionally tortured. In retrospect, the sheer level of torment was very autistic hyperfocus. My special interest person was Jacob, and I just could not get over the fact that he’d chosen Kim over me. I’d watch with seething anger as she twirled his hair idly around her finger during class. How dare she be so casual about touching him! It was almost as though the level of informality with which she displayed her affection existed solely to rub it in my face. I think I would have felt better if she had’ve been more reverent - it still would have hurt but at least it would have made more sense to my aching heart.

Eventually, as all childhood bf/gf relationships do, they broke up over something stupid. My hair grew out but Jacob never returned to me. My flame burned away all the same, never really changing in size or taking new shape. It was somehow a self-renewing resource even though there were diminishing returns in the form of physical contact, hangouts or even jokes. Fewer and fewer things were stored in my bank - fuelling me, giving my life meaning.

My love was officially unrequited. But since it was my first love, I didn’t realize there was another way to feel. I was tortured, but that felt quite normal. And somehow the very nature of yearning so consistently ensured that this flame wasn’t able to extinguish itself - an enduring hope was sown deep. Hope that someday Jacob would truly see me.

---

I’d have to wait many, many more years - but eventually we did have our moment. After graduating from elementary school my parents and I moved out of that small town into another one about six hours away. When I was 18 I was homeless but had been working a full time job with a motley crew of other misfit teens. I’d received a message that Jacob was in town, and he wanted to see me. Of course I jumped at the chance, even though I had nowhere for either of us to stay and I wasn’t exactly my best-smelling, most admirable self.

I arranged to meet him at the downtown cafe that I (quite literally) haunted. I hadn’t seen him in years and in he strolled that warm day in June. He was drop-dead gorgeous. My eyebrows must’ve blasted through the ceiling. And my heart…oh my heart…which had been roosting in the nest of my chest for years, foraying out now and again to have experiences with boys that never quite felt right - bloomed open readily for him, because it was always about him. Deep down, always.

We spend the day together walking all over town and talking. It was easy, free-flowing, and filled my cup in a way I had not been expecting. That night, having nowhere to crash, I took him up to the roof of my old high school (which did require climbing over a barbed wire fence, but I was used to such trespasses). I rolled out my sleeping bag for us and we climbed in. His body - my body - they were so…mature. All at once I noticed that we’d grown into these adult-type forms that were primed and ready to connect in ways I’d fantasized about for ages of the earth. We laid there, looking up at the sky, admiring the stars and shapes the clouds made. It was then that he kissed me. And I wish I could say that it was bad, that my fantasies greatly outweighed the reality, that my greatest imaginings were perfect and this was not - that would have been easier.

But no, no. The kiss was exquisite. I became a puddle of consciousness, nothing more. It was as if all of those countless moments of yearning, like tendrils emanating from my body towards him, all came rushing back and the sensation of their convergent return overwhelmed me, blurring the boundaries.

The next day, as he dropped me off at work and made his way to the bus station to go home, he told me he loved me. We fell out of touch after that for many years, only to receive whispers here and there. He settled into his life and me into mine, but he carved within me a hollowed-out crystal palace which is called yearning.

yearning palace mood board

I love all of these synonyms too but they’re missing ‘pining’

Some may find the palpably disquieted dissatisfaction of yearning to be repulsive. The whole point of yearning, to them, is to eventually attain the thing in question and scratch that itch. To some, it needs to reach a moment of zenith - like those who believe that the whole point of sex is the orgasm.

Granted, yearning endlessly is - in its most rudimentary form - an irritant. To long for something is to grow long, arms and hands extending miles and miles into empty space, grasping at the air. To be hungry is to gnaw, to be thirsty is to shrivel. These are all irritating impulses at their root, driving us forward to find relief. But what this generous lesson of unrequited love taught me was that yearning is a state in an of itself that doesn’t actually need to be relieved, or remedied. To yearn…is to yearn. It doesn’t have to cause anguish, pain or torture. It can just be. It is a hollowed out palace waiting to be filled - but it can also be filled with more of itself. Yearning is somehow both grief and hope simultaneously: grief because it is mourning what is missing, hope because as long as there is life, there is a chance that it may come to fruition. Sometimes, the chance alone is enough.

I love to yearn as it reminds me that I am alive. My desire and passion is a complex spider’s web glistening with dew between the tree branches. The spider makes the web hoping to relieve its hunger, but the web is a work of art nonetheless.

Until next time,

Love and wolves.

D xx

*Names changed to protect privacy.