Hi Esther, where do I begin?

Well, I think the first thing to say is that for most of my adult life,

my romantic and sexual experiences have been with men.

But the story I want to talk to you about is about a girl.

And my question really is around unrequited love and how do you live with unrequited love?

So the background to the story is that when I was young, maybe around 11, 12,

I became extremely infatuated with one of my classmates and had very grown-up sort of ideas

about the kind of attraction I had towards her and what a possible romantic life would look like.

As it turns out, however, when I took the opportunity to sort of confess all of these feelings to her,

she plainly said that she didn't feel the same way about me.

That rejection was not entirely unexpected, given that she's from an entirely different

class than I was. And the social structure of the place I'm from sort of dictates you know

romantic relationships and I was very aware of that so I'm now in my 30s but of late and quite often she comes up in my memory and I can't seem to forget her

and she shapes a lot of what I expect emotionally in relationships and she's a lot of what I expect emotionally in relationships.

And she's a sort of silent character in my romantic life,

and it leaves me with a lot of longing and unfulfilled desires.

So my question, really I think I know, is not one that can be resolved,

but it's a life question for me, I think, of how to live with unrequited love.

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