I love this woman with all my heart and I know it'll never happen

She's one of my former workmates from my second-to-last job. She's a fucking weirdo, but she's my kind of weirdo. All grim and trash Goth, deals with crystals and Wiccan stuff, which I like as lore and nothing more, but I love about her. She annoys me in all the right ways.

We had instant rapport, and my jaw was on the floor the moment I saw her. Wasn't just me, you could hear chins hitting plywood all across the office. And rightfully so, she's... forcefully beautiful and raw, don't know how else to put this. She has such a way about her, she's almost aggressively herself and knows what she's got, a very earthy person. I still don't know why I had the courage to even broach an interaction with her, but I'm glad I did, because my gut was right.

We had a rough friendship for the first couple of years. I struggled to reconcile the fact that I was falling desperately in love with her with the deepening bond of genuine friendship which developed. Luckily, my desire to see her happy trumped my myriad wants and I reached a precarious balance with this stuff, which I'm still somewhat maintaining. We went from long stretches of time during which we went out almost every day, either the two of us or with our work group, and equally long stretches of time where we didn't even text each other for, I think, even a year.

I've been a dick to her more times than I want to admit. I understand why I dropped so low as to splash a bit of my shit on her, but I still feel so ashamed of it every time we see each other now. We also had sex once, after emptying a litre of gin between us. The last thing I remember was sharing our suffering, then she was on top of me and we kissed. Then it's just flashes of disbelief and emotional (yes, just that) fulfilment of a sort, but they're just the backdrop to some incredibly blurry snippets of memories. I didn't feel proud of it the next day. I did one of the stupidest things I believed I never would do with one of my dearest friends, whom I love so much beyond friendship, that an immense sense of respect is intrinsic to everything. I can't believe the level of complete self-abandon I've allowed myself to reach with her.

And I can't believe that we're still interacting, that we've even grown a lot closer since then. And, yeah, I love her. It's as clear as day to me now, I've grown to love this woman. Deeply. Voraciously. She's been there with me through some of my worst mistakes, as I've been there for hers. I genuinely don't think anyone else alive really knows me as much as she does. We've seen each other ugly-cry multiple times and our arms know each other's anguish. We've seen each other brought low and defeated, denuded of pride and dignity. And that just made us draw each other closer in, somehow.

I'd be lying if I said that this whole thing didn't scare the crap out of me. I can feel the pangs of lack still going strong after all of these years. It's the knowing, the understanding that we'll never cuddle, I'll never get to wake up to her, to kiss her lips, to devour her, to more constantly bask in her presence - this is not just a pretentious metaphor, I genuinely feel like I imagine a lizard feels on a hot rock under a glaring sun. There are moments when it drives me up the walls, I'll be honest. It's why I won't allow myself to drink with her ever again. It's why I'll never agree to spend the night over ever again, even if it means sleeping on park benches. I don't want to even risk doing anything to endanger our friendship, because I don't want to picture my life without her in it in one form or another.