Massive name change for this, for a variety of reasons.
I'm in my 30s. When I was 14, I fell utterly, totally in love with a teacher. I'm not talking about a silly teenage crush - despite what it sounds like. I've only ever felt this way before about my DH.
The teacher, M, was a substitute teacher - I suppose what now would be termed a cover supervisor. He was late 20s at the time. It started off as a teenage crush, yes - but over time, though he rarely taught me, we developed a friendship. We would seek each other out in the playground to talk - novels and music and lyrics. We would laugh, we had our in jokes. He was one of the people closest to me at the time.
Nothing ever, ever happened. Of course, I wished it could, but it didn't. It gradually became that I would spend each break and most lunchtimes in his classroom, chatting away and laughing. He would give me tapes(!) of songs by his band, he would help me write.
Things changed, however, one day when we were sitting together, feet on tables, in his room - and my English teacher came in. She'd paused, confused, and then quickly asked to talk to M outside. When he came back in, he said something had come up. That was the last I saw of him, except for brief glimpses in corridors. I kept up with our usual routine, waiting outside his classroom at break times, and he would brush past me. Devastated wouldn't even cover it.
A few weeks later we saw each other in a corridor and he told me he had a new job at the other end of the country. I waited for him on his final day, and gave him a piece of paper with my address on it. He looked at it, and said goodbye.
Of course, now, with a great deal of retrospect, I know that the situation must have looked dreadful, and every credit to my English teacher for dealing with it head on, because I KNOW she must have had concerns. I've worked in enough schools to know that I would take exactly the same action. But even now, by stomach twists when I think of it.
Two and a half years ago, I discovered (yes, via a facebook search) that he had died in his early 40s. Very young, very sudden. An outpouring of grief from students at his school. I went in to some kind of meltdown, and it took a good 6 months for me to come to work through my feelings.
Somehow, in the last 18 months things changed, and I would think of him only briefly when I heard one of his songs on my ipod. I would smile. I had some difficulty when the whole Megan Stammers story with the teacher surfaced - so many things about the story hit home. Despite being disgusted as an adult with the story, my teenage self felt...jealous, perhaps.
Then, 3 days ago, out of the blue, I had another dream about him. These have been regular - probably one a month - ever since I was 14. I had none in the last 18 months. It was exactly the same dream as ever, meeting him in school, sitting, chatting, laughing. Walking around the school. I'm never able to tell if I'm 14/15 or my age now. And it doesn't seem to matter.
I don't know what I want from this thread. My head's been messed up again for the last few days, and I just need to tell someone. I'm hoping for replies and I will try to respond (but I'm also terrified of a Bupcakes-esque name cockup here!)
I think I just needed to put it out there. I'm just wondering if anyone can understand.