Welcome to Interviews With My Ex-Girlfriend, in which Autostraddle writers get back in touch with their ex-girlfriends to ask them Five Simple Questions:

1. How long did we date?
2. Why did we break up?
3. What did you learn from our relationship?
4. What do you miss most about me?
5. Would you invite me to your wedding (why/why not)?

I met Jade at a skateboard park somewhere in Hong Kong. It was the late nineties; we were just kids. She’d been dragged away from her plush school in Sydney because her mother had got a new job. I’d travelled there voluntarily, with a one-way ticket and no plan, job or place to stay. We became fast friends, and then more than friends. She was funny and beautiful. We spent every waking moment together. We held hands at the back of buses and made out in the back of cinemas. We smoked weed on her parents’ rooftop and the crept into her bedroom after they went to bed. She would’ve been my first ever ex-girlfriend if we’d been sure or brave enough to put a name on what we had.

Our relationship took place before camera-phones and Facebook existed and so we couldn’t find any cute photos of us together.

Artistic impression of Crystal & Jade circa 1999

Crystal: To the best of your recollection, how long were we together? When were we together?

Jade: Six months? I think it was ’99.

Crystal: I think so. Because we were 15, yeah?

Jade: Weren’t we 14? Oh! What year was that Spice Girls movie released?

Crystal: *googles* 1997! Oh shit, no. That would have made us, what, 13? No, that can’t be right.

Jade: No, no way. But movie schedules there were always weird. You were fucking obsessed with that movie, do you remember?

Crystal: Ha, yes. I dragged you to see it with me all the time.

Jade: Sometimes I still think about that. Not that I think about those days often… but, now and then, it’s nice to remember how weird and confusing your whole deal was. You were a different kid.

Crystal: What do you mean?

Jade: Like, your tastes and aesthetic… I remember you listened to punk bands and had this crazy purple punk hair, but then you were also obsessed with the Spice Girls and wore those shirts with cartoon characters embroidered on them. Also one day you showed up with a perm?

Bambi double denim

Crystal: Those shirts were only a few dollars at Stanley Markets. It was a bargain.

Jade: That’s what I mean! No kids our age thought like that. We were all so obsessed with fitting in but you never gave a fuck. Not in the way some kids tried so hard to be special snowflakes, either. You didn’t act like our teenage bullshit was dumb, like you were above it. You were just, I don’t know… politely uninterested?

Crystal: Thanks, I think? Spice World ended up being hugely influential in terms of my life direction, just so you know.

Jade: That doesn’t surprise me.

Crystal: But it’s not like you were a typical teen, either. You played rugby! That was pretty out there for that time. I thought that was so badass. To answer the question, though… let’s go with us being maybe 14 or possibly 15 and dating for six months. Now that I’m in my thirties, neither of those ages seem old enough to date.

Jade: I was definitely too young to know better.

Crystal: Funny. But maybe true?

Jade: We were both a lot older than our ages, though. Lots of immigrant kids we knew were. But you especially. We weren’t formally dating, anyway. It’s not like you ever asked me to be your girlfriend.

Crystal: You’re right about us not technically dating, but it wasn’t some casual friends with benefits situation either…

Jade: No, no, it was much more than that.

Crystal: Would you have wanted to be my girlfriend?

Jade: I don’t know. That’s a question I asked myself a lot over the years, usually in the context of whether it would have changed anything. There were definitely frustrating times when I wished we had something that I could name or define, or maybe tell friends about. But who knows whether I would have actually been ready for that. I was still figuring myself out.

Crystal: Do you remember why we broke up?

Jade: Of course! Wait, do you?

Crystal: Yeah, I do. How do you remember it?

Jade: You came to my house and just casually mentioned that you were moving back to Sydney. We smoked a joint on the roof and then you slept over. When I woke up you were gone.

Crystal: That’s how I remember it too. How did you feel about all that? I don’t really recall you having a bad reaction.

Jade: You didn’t give me a chance to react. You just left.

Crystal: That’s true. For whatever it’s worth now, I’m sorry about the shitty way I handled that.

Jade: Too little too late there, champ. But it’s fine. Actually, no — it sucked in a big way. You were my first girlfriend… or whatever. I was so in love with you. And being in Hong Kong had intensified things between us so much. Our social circle was tiny, we were all we had. So for you to leave, and so suddenly… that was heartbreaking.

Crystal: Ugh. I’m sorry. Again.

Jade: It’s okay. I’ve forgiven you.

Crystal: Yeah, sounds like.

Jade: No, really! I have. I was a teenager; you could have broken up with me in the nicest way and I still would have believed that my whole world was ending. I thought you loved me and my idealistic baby brain couldn’t comprehend that love wasn’t a good enough reason for you to stay. Also I think what made everything so much harder was that it was the 90s. I couldn’t drunk-text you my feelings at 2 am. I fucking hated you and there was no easy way to let you know that.

Crystal: I don’t mean this as an excuse, more just an explanation with the benefit of hindsight: I think… back then I really wasn’t used to people caring about whether or not I was around. I didn’t think leaving town was a big deal because so many people in my life had walked away from me like it was no big deal. Honestly it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that up and leaving wasn’t the status quo.

Jade: Yeah, that’s something I figured out for myself later on. I think I was too young to fully comprehend how your upbringing could have influenced your behaviour. Still, you could have handled things a LOT better than you did.

Crystal: That’s fair. I understand why you were so pissed.

Jade: You were the first girl I’d been attracted to. I had a tonne of shit to figure out and you were supposed to be with me on that journey. You bailed on me during a huge identity crisis — one that you played a big hand in bringing about.

Crystal: Now I feel even more terrible. Why did I think this interview was a good idea?

Jade: Yes, seriously. How did you expect this go?

Crystal: For what it’s worth, I really wanted to reach out once I arrived back home. Leaving had been hard; I missed you so much. But like you said, it’s not like we could text or Skype. Your parents would have barred any attempt at contacting you, I’m pretty sure.

Jade: No doubt. They would have burned your letters. Blocked your number. Moved me to a safe house.

Crystal: I still don’t understand why they hated me so much? It’s not like they knew we were hooking up… right?

Jade: Oh god no. They were just protective. You saw my life, it was so sheltered. To them you were this strange kid who lived in a convent and came out of nowhere. They didn’t know you and so they didn’t trust you.

Crystal: Well I guess that was fairly astute of them, given how things between us developed. Should we talk about what happened when you moved back to Sydney?

Jade: Like how I didn’t want anything to do with you? I was still so cut. Plus I was excited to get back to my old school, to be with my old friends. By that time you’d gotten a boyfriend and I didn’t want to deal with that.

Crystal: But we did become friends again in our senior year, although I don’t remember that lasting long.

Jade: Yeah, we tried to do the friends thing a few times. It just never stuck. Things between us were so different in Sydney. I was still really attracted to you but it was like what we had together could only exist in Hong Kong. Does that sound weird?

Crystal: No, not at all. It’s true. We’d built this little insular world and it couldn’t be replicated anywhere else. But also our needs were totally different. In Sydney we had so many more people in our lives, so many other distractions…

Jade: Exactly. I had your full attention in Hong Kong and it was like once I knew how that felt, no way would I settle for less. Maybe that was really selfish but it had to be all or nothing with you.

Crystal: We did go on that one date, though. One day you came into my work just by chance, after us not having seen each other in years. I remember us getting along really well. Why didn’t we stay in touch?

Jade: We did, it was such a nice time. I think enough years had passed for me to be able to see you as an adult, almost like a brand-new person, rather than my teenage fling from Hong Kong. That changed things. You didn’t seem like you were in a good place though.

Crystal: Oh.

Jade: You seemed really… destructive? I remember you were hooking up with your boss and making some a few other questionable decisions. You weren’t high at the time but my feeling was that you’d been doing a lot of drugs.

Crystal: Yikes.

Jade: It was hard to see that you didn’t have your shit together. So why didn’t you stay in touch?

Crystal: I can’t remember. It sounds like I had a lot going on.

Jade: Yeah, you were busy. I think everything worked out okay, in the end. I’d just started seeing a really great guy and now we’re married. It seems like you’re having a good life as well. This might sound harsh but I’m actually really glad that there was no second date.

Crystal: That’s fair. And I guess that answers the next question, about whether you’d invite me to your wedding. I wouldn’t invite you to mine either.

Jade: I haven’t even invited you to be my Facebook friend.

Crystal: No, and I’m fine with that. It’s been so long. Do you miss anything about me?

Jade: Yes, of course. I know I’ve been ragging on you pretty hard but that’s only because losing your… goodness… from my life really sucked. The thing I miss most is probably how fearless you were. You were shy but at the same time you were so confident and self-assured about a lot of things, which rubbed off on me. You just did whatever-the-fuck and that was something I admired.

Crystal: That makes me sound a little bratty.

Jade: No, not at all. God, you’re one of the most grounded people I’ve ever met. You can add that to the things I miss. What I mean is that you just took everything in stride. It was so frustrating! I’d be sitting there, totally freaking out over being attracted to you, a girl. Just fully panicking and going “BUT WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN???” and you’d just shrug and tell me not to overthink it, because that’s how you handled your life. I mean, fuck you.

Crystal: I miss your unique way of complimenting me.

Jade: Ha. What I’m saying is that you had this self-assuredness and… optimism that I missed, even though there was usually a frustrating side to those things. But no matter what shit was going down you always made me feel like things would work out okay. I think… given what your life had been like up to that point, that was pretty amazing. I feel like you should have turned into this bitter, negative person but you weren’t, and when I held my life up against yours it helped put my problems in perspective.

Crystal: Maybe this will be a similar answer… what did you learn from our relationship?

Jade: Trust no one?

Crystal: Ouch.

Jade: Kidding… sort of. No, I’d say the biggest learning was that sometimes it’s okay for good things to end. I was always so sentimental about my relationships. I’d try hanging onto people long after they’d stopped contributing goodness to my life. I think our failed attempts at reuniting over the years has taught me that some things have an expiry date and that’s okay.

Crystal: True, our relationship really hasn’t stood up against time. I’m fine with that too. We made some really great memories and I’m pretty happy to just enjoy those instead of trying to force a friendship again.

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