Five Years Already?

Five years can be both impressive or disturbing,
In MY case, it's a little bit of both (with a little hint of *scary*).
I guess it's normal to like someone for very a long time (I won't say love, because I'm too young to understand what *real* love is, most teenagers don't), but when it gets to the point where you're having sub-conscious dreams about that person it gets a little scary.
You have to wonder what that person did to affect your life so greatly.
In my case, it's not a parent or a good friend, but a former girlfriend of mine.
She was special to me in all definitions of the word (except for mentally disabled).
My relationship with her was hectic to say the least. It was a constant pattern of breaking up, getting back together, breaking up, getting back together and so on (even including her moving to a completely different state. Then she moved back. That was weird).
When I entered my freshman year of highschool (I wasn't worried about losing her in that year since she was still in 8th grade) I realized that our two-and-a-half-year relationship would come to an end. Upon her graduation, she would be attending a co-ed highschool whereas I was confined to an all-boys prep-school. However, being the optimistic little SOB that I was, I wanted it to last for as long as possible.
The exact opposite happened, I triggered an event that would actually end it much faster than I expected and I was heartbroken and devastated (call me a pansy, but I did confide to my friends and family thoughts of suicide. I'm past that stage now, thankfully).
I've been completely severed from contacting her in anyway and it has been like that for nearly two years already, yet I can say that I still *love* her after a total of five years.

In those two years I finally learned how important she was to me as my best friend, not my girlfriend (I smacked myself in the head when I realized it). "How foolish could I have been to not realize it earlier!" I said maniacally to myself in bed at 2:07 in the morning, "How stupid could I really be? It was right there in my face and I never acted on it."
Sadly, that realization came a little (sarcastically mind you) too late. After a legal debacle and one-year contact order.

Oh, the irony, if only that revelation had come just a couple of months earlier and things would be much much much different and perhaps I'd still have my best friend.
If I'm given another chance at being her friend, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Things have been rather empty since we pulled apart. I've never had a better friend before.

Her name is Hannah and, after five years, I wish I had not been foolish and naive.

Her presence was comforting, talking to her was relaxing, being with her was dreaming.