If the purpose of loving someone is to learn lessons, the lesson I learned from my unrequited love for Twinkles was a hard one about what happens to an opposite-sex platonic friendship when the male in the group gets married... to someone you don't like and who doesn't like you.
Twinkles came out of nowhere. It was like, one day I didn't know him, and the next day I did. It was like he just appeared! He wasn't gross and crude the way that young guys can be. I think it was because he was older than me, but even today, I cannot tell you by how much. He was funny and kind, with a childlike spirit. He kind of put me in mind of child Simba or Winnie the Pooh. He was like a big, tall kid. And he was spiritual. Like for real. I had witnessed him pray for things, and the prayer be answered in real time! It was crazy! Being around him made me happy, and that is saying a lot, because I just may be the most negative person that I know. He just radiated positive energy. And much like the other unrequiteds, I am sure that he was pretty aware of how much I liked him. I have never been good at hiding my real feelings on anything. Yet, he still hung out with me.
One of the worst things about being friends with someone you love is that you most certainly will have to watch them like someone else. Twinkles had a huge crush on our friend Trina, who, although sweet, was a bit of an airhead. She was skinny and pretty with long hair. Again, I was confronted with someone I liked liking someone who I could never be, which will break you if you let it. However, Trina didn't like him. Isn't that the way of the world? I guess you could say that situation should have prepared me for the one that would like him back, the woman he would marry.
When you are young, you don't know things until you know them, and what I didn't know in my early 20s was what it would be like to maintain a friendship with a guy who was getting married, especially to someone outside of your friend group who really isn't in to you. You see, I graduated college and Twinkles went on to pharmacy school and that is when he met the Elephant Person he would marry. She too seemed to come out of nowhere. I had never heard of her until he called me to tell me he was torn between two girls, the tall chick with the pretty Afro and the Elephant Person. This made me nervous seeing that right before graduation, one of the Elephant People had treated to kill me, but that is a story for another time. Regardless, I was on the side of the Elephant Person because she was making him be serious about school. As fond as I was of Twinkles, he could be a slack ass. He was the type that would pay attention in class just enough to get a C instead of study hard to get an A. I imagine she was the one that also introduced him to the incredibly slow ghost technique, because our friendship simmered down to a drip until I wouldn't hear from him in years. More to come.
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