About thirteen years ago, I lost connection with a friend. We did not break up or fight, it just seemed like we walked away in different directions. This seemed to happen at the same time I made one of my bigger and more bizarre mistakes (I got married).
Only recently I have remembered not only the person. I also became aware of how large she looms in my very long and slow journey towards my own queerness.

I want to tell you about her.

We met in school when we were both ~16 years old. She was the first (and for a long time the only) queer person in my life. I am from a small village. She was from another small village next to mine. For quite some time I did not even know why I felt attracted to her. I thought I was in love, but in a strange low-key way that did not burn or hurt, but just tickle softly in the heart.

Anyway, we both did not know how to queer. I was dimly aware of something I came to call my bisexuality (years later, when I finally dared to acknowledge such things about myself). She was with a dude she called her boyfriend, an uptight soldier who, when dealing with her, made the impression of a man operating machinery he did not understand.
But then again, we all tried to figure out stuff no one ever told us about, in our own ways.

Things came into motion when we went to university. She broke up with the soldier and, a bit later, fell in love with a fellow student. She told me under the pledge of secrecy that her crush was a woman. I told her in return that I felt sexually attracted to male and female persons alike (I was still thinking in strictly binary terms at that time). So we became allies in our very small and, apart from ourselves, very heterosexual world.

So we talked. We shared our struggles, which were of course not the same, but of a similar nature. And eventually - today I think that she might have perceived something I was not aware of - she half-jokingly called me her "beste Freundin", which means "best friend", but in a distinct female form.

And that was it; the first rush of gender euphoria I ever experienced.

From that moment, I was her best (girl-)friend, and I just enjoyed it. My appearance was still that dude-ish person who, quite obviously, was completely not at ease with themself; it would take me another 15 years to work that out, but that is a different story.
We explored the newly discovered gay universe together, went to Pride Parades and gay bars and met all those gorgeous women she henceforth, with relish, dared to openly desire.

And sadly, I still do not know what happened then. Somehow our ways just parted; I think I tried to invite her to my wedding, but I can not remember if she was there. Probably she was disappointed because I was doing something so tremendously heteronormative, and frankly, I think if she really felt that way, she was completely right.