I had to wash it three times to get her scent to fade. It was as if every time I held the sweatshirt I was holding her, and I couldn’t stand the sting of her skin against mine one minute longer. I remember the frenzy of washing. The desperation I threw in with the soap and water. They say your skin regenerates entirely every 27 days, and I’ve been through so many layers that she’s never even touched, but she’s always with me. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the way I left things.

This inner turmoil started the way everything starts: as friendship. We met in sixth grade. I barely knew her name, yet I had already begun to care for and protect her. Our interactions included letting her borrow my sweatshirt (for it seems I’ve always done that), and keeping her name a secret when she sent anonymous love notes to the boy she had crushes on for three years. But I didn’t really get to know her until a mutual friend brought us together.

She was there during a difficult phase of our already formidable adolescent years. She was there, and she understood things nobody else did. That created a link stronger than personality alone. She was special. And she still is. But that’s what’s dangerous about falling in love with the idea of a person rather than the person themselves; they never turn out to be who you think they are. People aren’t defined by how you see them. What you try to turn them in to. And I didn’t understand that; she had changed me in so many ways that I assumed maybe I could change her too.

I didn’t realize I was falling for her until it was too late. The concept of bisexuality was foreign to me. By the time I had accepted that it’s actually possible to be attracted to both boys and girls, I knew I was already mad for her. She was the center of my universe, and everything in my life orbited around her.

She dictated my future, and I let her. We made plans together. Scratch that, she made the plans. I didn’t know any better. She would talk about how maybe one night, if it was late and she was careless, she’d give me what I really wanted. She teased me, dishing out pieces of affection like scraps tossed to an alley cat, knowing it would never be satisfying.

Despite that, I thought of her scraps as gifts. She talked about love between us as something physical, and I begged and cried out for as much as she could give me. A touch would linger. She would sit a little too close. I would do little things too. She wore my clothes like a second layer of skin. My pride denies it, but I liked the idea of something marking her as mine.

Seeing her walk the halls wearing my sweatshirt, watching her push up the too big sleeves, filled me with an adoration I would never have admitted then. Still, the most pathetic part of all was that while I was trying to get her attention, she was giving it to someone else. Someone she was with. Romantically.

I hated him, but I hated her too for making me share. Loving her tore me apart until I had nothing left. As I destroyed myself for this girl, I began to question why I was doing it. What made her so special that I had placed her on a pedestal? I drew a blank. Every day I found new faults in her. Eventually, I started to resent her being part of my life. I didn’t just take her down from the pedestal; I threw her off so I could watch her fall. Or at least I thought I did. I never had the same power over her as she did me.

All that affection turned into anger, and it burned inside me. Hating her was so much easier than loving her. Not answering a text, not reaching out, not putting forth the effort that I always had felt like the world was taken off my shoulders. So I cut all my ties and moved on.

Life is never that easy, though. She never reached back for me; she just let me run away. And that was the confirmation that she never loved me as I loved her that I still think about. I had to suffer through the reminder that she had let me cut her out and never looked back, not even as we passed by each other in the halls.

I couldn’t bear to see her, and I went out of my way to avoid her. It got to the point where I would walk on another floor so I wouldn’t have to pass her. She still had my sweatshirt from all that time ago, so I recruited a friend to get it back for me. All I wanted was for her to be gone from my life. I wished every day that she would just go away and get out of my head.

When she announced she was transferring to a different school, I realized that maybe I hadn’t wanted her to leave; I had wanted a reason for her to stay.

I’ll never forget the last moment we had together. I had seen her at lunch to say good-bye. Cut my ties, right? But then I saw her waiting to get picked up after school. Some sadistic part of my brain urged me to go speak to her. The self-preserving part of my memory has blocked out who initiated it, but suddenly, I had my arms around her, and she was squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe. All I wanted to do was breathe in her smell, how perfectly she fit in my arms, the way she wouldn’t let go.

Until one of us did. We said a last good-bye. It was weak compared to what had just happened. I could still the warmth of that hug even as I walked to my bus. As we drove away, the warmth began to leech from my body. By the time I got off, I felt as cold as ice.

I was left untethered and was so wrapped up in the thoughts of her being gone that when I got home I went straight to my closet and pulled out the sweatshirt she’d kept for so many months. I held it against me, trying to regain the warmth I’d lost, trying to find some connection, but it wasn’t her.

I couldn’t stand it, so I threw the sweatshirt in the wash. And then again. And then again.