I first met Dylan in junior college. Back then, I was feisty and eager, making friends wherever I went, enthusiastic about all my activities. He was the loner, always sitting alone on the bench, on the steps, or in the lecture theatres. I remember the first day we met: as part of a club activity we were supposed to take a van to the hospital to cheer up sick children. He was sitting on the entrance steps, talking to someone else. I sat down next to him and introduced myself.

We became fast friends, and soon everyone thought we were together. I would look for him when I had nothing to do, and he would always reserve a seat for me next to him in the lecture halls. We did silly things together, like make faces from bus windows, pretend to be email-pals by sending each other ‘You’ve Got Mail’ emails. We talked about movies and what a great writer Stephen King is. Still, I never considered him my boyfriend, because I was crushing on someone else in my class. I was eighteen, and having Dylan for a boyfriend had never crossed my mind - it was more fun being friends.

Needless to say, Dylan was hurt every time I mentioned my crush, though he never told me he liked me. After we graduated from junior college he sent me a text message, saying he thought we were 100% compatible. I just laughed. As the years passed, and he was enlisted into the army and I went to college, I thought about him more and more. I listened to Coldplay, Matchbox Twenty, Vonda Shepard, and Elton John, and every song had some connection to him. Sometimes I missed him so much I cried. The more I thought about the times we had, the more I missed him.

We kept in contact occasionally, but he seemed awkward each time we met, and I managed to forget about him after we graduated from college. In 2006, after three years of living separate lives, he messaged me online. We started chatting and decided to meet again. It was wonderful, like time had never passed. We laughed and talked incessantly, watched movies and talked about our friends. He made remarks that made me think he still had feelings for me, and that made me so happy.

On our third meeting, he gave me a keychain - a cowgirl doll. He had the boy version of it. I thought that was the sign he really liked me. Memories of our past and present flooded my mind and I thought for sure we would work out. Still, something didn’t seem right. He became terribly avoidant and didn’t seem at all interested in having anything more than a friendship. I became confused and depressed. After each meeting with him I would go to my room and cry, wondering what had happened to make him act this way. Then he stopped talking to me completely, but I persisted, and arranged for more meetups. Around this time I started listening to Mandarin songs because he liked them. Being bad at the Chinese language, I had never listened to them, but soon Jolin Tsai’s “Ling Meng Cao De Wei Dao” (”The Scent of Lemon Grass”) was on my iPod repeat because it summed us up so well.

One Friday we met again. The following Tuesday, I told him that I liked him via text message. He never replied. For the next couple of days I cried whenever I was alone, desperately hanging on to the memory of what had been, although I knew in my heart that he didn’t love me any more and that we wouldn’t really be right for each other. On Saturday, I asked if he had received my message. He said he had, and explained that he didn’t see us as a couple.

I didn’t press further, though all my friends were angry with him for his delayed reply. They told me to get to the bottom of things, to demand a clear explanation of what he was thinking. That night, I bombarded him with a series of questions. Yes, he liked me, but when we met again after all those years, he didn’t feel the same special feelings for me. Since I was going out on other dates, he had decided not to explain himself, to simply stop seeing or contacting me.

This left me confused. Although I had dated, it was never anything serious - because I loved him. The more I asked, the more I found out about him and his issues with the past, his ideas about love. He said he loved me then, but not now, because he didn’t ‘feel’ it. We talked online for three hours, each accusation and defense more agonizing than the next. I finally realized that both of us had been living entirely in the past, and while I had changed, he had not. He was still the idealistic person he once was, and I had seen a terrible side of him - he could be so arrogant while claiming to be humble.

My stomach was tied in knots and my body ached. It was almost hilarious, talking online with him as my friends sat next to me for support, suggesting answers and questions. Yet, I felt a deep sense of loss - the loss of innocence and sweet, simple love. The loss of a friend. Jolin Tsai’s song never left my mind. The lyrics simply took on a new meaning and became clearer to me. “None of us are to blame / We are just unsuitable together / Happiness is mine to seek / Not given by you.” It rang in my head, like a loop. “Give my past self a hug / She did not know what to do then / Thank you, thank you / Because of you I experienced the goodness of love.”

Until today this was the breakup song, my breakup song. It was my first foray into Mandarin music, and a heartbreaking one at that. Thank you, Dylan, for giving me the chance to love someone, even though you were the wrong person to love. Now, finally, I can move on.