Que sont mes amis devenus/Qua j'avais de si près tenus/Et tant aimés

Talk about flashbacks. I have just found my first love via Facebook.

To sum up: Facebook is like Friendster for American universities. You have a profile, photo, can join groups, send messages, testimonials (called The Wall), the whole shebang. And you can search for people based on their previous education, finding old friends you went to high school with, etc.

So I got a message in my inbox today, "B has requested you as a friend on Facebook!" I was reading B.'s profile, and there she was, Annie, the first message on B.'s wall.

I kind of fell for Annie before I ever saw her. When I was 12 the big news in the sixth grade was that we'd be getting a new student next year, a girl from England. I was already a raging Anglophile, and I used to daydream about her, trying to imagine her accent, wondering what she looked like. Maybe we'd even be friends; probably not, I was bookish and unpopular, but wouldn't it be cool if she was? I had had small childhood crushes on girls before, though I didn't recognize them for what they were at the time; they consisted of me quietly adoring a girl from afar and hoping she would let me sit with her and her friends at lunch.
But, wonder of wonders, when Annie arrived the next fall, not only was she well-liked and beautiful, she became a part of my little circle of friends. Annie was my friend!! She liked me! I couldn't believe my luck. She was sweet and funny, with long curly black hair, and I adored her. She didn't have an accent, actually; her father was in the Army and they moved around a lot. We became a tight-knit bunch, Annie, B, S, me, C and K. Always ate lunch together, had slumber parties, went to the movies. I agonized over her birthday present; what could I get her that would communicate how I felt? It was more like an offering of my affections. I remember sitting across from her during lunch one day, and I cracked some joke, and her wonderful laughter spilled out and she said I was so funny. I swear, I walked on air for weeks, because Annie thought I was funny. It's all still so vivid.
I actually grew a bit jealous of B, who was a sweetheart, because she was Annie's Best Friend and got to spend a lot more time with her than I did. And I remember lining up for class in the hallway one ordinary day, thinking about Annie, and feeling that sickening drop in the pit of my stomach, as I realized that I didn't just like Annie, I like-liked her. You know...like that. The way all my friends felt about popular boys like Josh or Mark or Adam. And I can't adequately describe the experience of knowing something that you can't even name, because I didn't know the word lesbian then, I had only the vaguest understanding of what homosexuality was, I didn't know girls could be gay. Girls got married and had babies, or became nuns. The end. And how can you understand something that you have no words for? You can't, and I didn't, I was confused and terrified. I had this wierd sense of being physically broken inside, and I didn't know how to fix it. But I did know that it was Wrong, and that I should never tell anyone about it. I would just ignore it, and it would stop. I continued to adore Annie, but from a little further away. And then the next year, she moved again.

I requested her as friend, just to see what would happen, what she's like now. I doubt she even remembers me, at least not as clearly as I remember her.

ETA: She friended me, so she does technically remember me. Still gorgeous. Good lord is she lovely. And she's in the Feminists Unite! group. I was so worried that she might have turned into a Republican voting Stepford Wife like another old friend....I guess I could send her a message, but what would I say? 'Hi, I almost died when I found you on Facebook, you turned me into a dyke. Hope things are going well!'
Also, post title is from Pauvre Ruteboef, a medieval French courtly love poem. I thought it was fitting.