My secret

Something happened in my teenage years that I still don't know how to talk or think about even to this day. I had feelings for a girl in my class, and we becams friends - sort of. She seemed kind and empathetic. At some point, she started touching me - in front of other classmates. She would squish my face, because it felt "nice and soft"; she would hug me from the back and have her arms dangling from my shoulders, her hands touching my body; she would hold hands with me in public (she initiated the gesture and I went with it). I'm pretty sure she did this all unintentionally, but she would use expressions that were affectionate but suggestive in a way (mainly based on anime culture). It felt beyond platonic friendship, but of course looking back I know that she probably didn't mean anything.

The thing is she did all this without asking me if it was okay to touch me. She just assumed it was okay, because every girl was straight by default. But as I started to look back, I couldn't help but think about how off it felt, how it was never supposed to happen. I feel like I had no power to say no because "this is just what friends do" and "she was just being nice." And we were just a bunch of 14- and 15-year-olds who were clueless about such things as consent. So it happened. And I had weird feelings about those intimate moments when she touched me: I did have feelings for her and wanted romantic things to happen, but I was never okay with those gestures right off the bad, without me giving consent, especially in front of other people. They were too much and I felt uncomfortable experiencing them. To to this day I'm still confused.

Last night I bawled my eyes out just thinking about it, because I really I wish I had a different friend, someone who respected me and asked it was okay to touch me like that. At the same time, even after finding out that she was straight, I couldn't help have lingering feelings for her. And the sad thing is I still take such "forward gestures" romantically, and I still fantasize about being touched like that by girls. I still become automatically attracted to girls with a more forceful way of doing things, and who are so strong that they lead me even to the point of treating me as an object. Of course it's all fantasy and I am very big on consent in real life. I just think it's really sad. It's funny how your early experiences can shape how you approach relationships later on. 

I just wish it had never happened. I wish that my first experience with love was with someone who was different. But still, to this day, I blame myself for what had happened, and feel like I'm a bad person for telling her how I felt years after. When I told her, she completely shut down and said that we couldn't be friends any more. I was heartbroken. But she ended up saying that I was selfish and greedy for wanting to remaining friends after she rejected me. The thing is I never said anything like "we must be friends"; in fact, I was apologizing in every single sentence and begging her to see the value in our friendship. I would do no such thing now, but her words really stuck with me and left me feeling like a narcissist for years to come. I don't want to look like I'm blaming her for everything, but I guess I'm just really sad it. In the back of my mind I'm still waiting for an apology, which I know I'll never get.