When I told my friends afterwards, they said, "Of course you saw him", but I went into it with benign intentions. I wanted to go to a concert, and maybe we could have lunch. Maybe over lunch, he'd realize what a huge mistake he'd made, change his mind, and everything would be fine, but that wasn't my GOAL. I texted him from the Adirondacks, deliberately insouciant, asking if he'd like to have breakfast. Coffee? Tea? Me? A few seconds later, he replied, "Sure." Anyone with half a brain could see this was a terrible idea, but apparently both of us were operating with significantly less than that.

I took the forty-minute subway to his place in the morning with shaking hands. When I saw him, my heart plummeted: holy crap, was I still in love with him. We spent the whole day eyeing each other and at 11 p.m., I took off my shirt and we awkwardly climbed into bed. I was the one to eventually break the rigid distance by cautiously sliding a hand across his abdomen, then lower. He groaned. We'd always been good at sex, and that night was no exception.

The next day, I texted, asking if he'd like to get dinner. You know, since I was going to be in New York for a few days. "It was a mistake," he said. "I don't think we should see each other again." Again, in the movies, when someone says this, you can convince them to see you anyway, and things work out the way you want them to. Here, in real life, I completely lost my mind.

"Please see me before I leave," I texted, over and over. "No," he replied. I thought, You know, this is ridiculous. I know you want to see me. I know you miss me. He was a short walk from the R-train, and I felt sure that he'd change his mind if I was actually in his neighborhood, so I manufactured a reason to be in Bay Ridge. I carelessly asked if he wanted to have coffee since I'd be there anyway. No response. I found myself walking up and down 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, some part of me thankfully aware that it was actually not okay to just turn up on his doorstep Lloyd Dobler-style, boombox hoisted over my head. But...that's romantic, right? Surely if I just emailed him — from the Starbucks several blocks from his apartment — he'd agree to meet. I fortified myself with a brownie on a stick and obsessively refreshed my phone until the battery ran low. The next day, I had to go back to Canada. It was our last chance.

"Please just leave me alone," he finally emailed back. "This is torture. We can't be together." I forced myself onto the subway without walking by his apartment, then almost turned around again when I got to Brooklyn Heights. That night I texted him to apologize for texting him and to promise I'd never contact him again. He didn't respond.

After I got home, a malfunction erased every text he'd ever sent me from my phone. I was devastated, then deleted his number, seeing it as a sign that I would really be able to forget him this time. The next day, I went through my Google Voice archives and reprogrammed it. I texted him, deleted his number again, re-programmed it. I texted at night, when I knew he was working late. We'd now been not-dating for longer than we were ever together, and I'd been acting crazy for longer than I'd ever been acting sane.

He was actually quite honest and straightforward: please stop contacting me. I ignored him like a fedora-wearing Nice Guy of OKCupid. Encouraged by his occasional sporadic responses, I became the lab rat who receives intermittent reinforcement: I pushed feverishly on the little button, hoping that each time would magically bring my food pellet reward. Instead, he probably started telling his friends that I was alarming him. I blocked him on Twitter, then unblocked him; he didn't refollow me. I refollowed him, then unfollowed him. He did nothing. I tweeted at him. He ignored it. The flow of communication between us had ratcheted down a notch and I was desperate to get it back.

Then, I made a mental leap that was astounding in its agility. Reasoning that I had just this one last thing to say, and he'd always complained about the ineffectiveness of email...I made a video. That's cute, right? In it, I said how sorry I was for everything, explained that I knew him pretty well and so knew that he was probably just scared of the depth of his emotion for me, and reassured him that I wouldn't turn up outside his house, ha ha. I can only imagine what he must have thought when he saw this in Dropbox: the urge to change his name and move to a different borough must have been top of the list. After that, there were no responses at all to any of the recurring, slowly-reducing emails I sent. 

Finally I deleted his number from my phone and left it that way. His Twitter remained unfollowed, his website LeechBlocked. The fire of longing and connection within me burned its way down, leaving behind it a calm, cold awareness that I had just spent about four months being an absolute looney tune. Embarrassed, I hid the details from my friends, rightfully convinced they'd be horrified.

I still don't know what it was about him that made me the kind of person who harasses another human being after being told no, no, and no again. He was special, but as a friend pointed out, "Imagine what this would sound like if you were a man and he was a girl." Yikes. I still occasionally find myself wanting to email him to apologize, explain that I understand how crazy I was now...but I somehow manage to resist.