I don't think the relationship is entirely in someone's head. I've always heard it as a lesbian singing to a friend who experimented with her when they were teenagers, to the point that the singer thought of them as girlfriends. But either it was never as serious to the other girl, or it was at odds with the conventional life she planned for herself. After high school, she got involved with a guy and tried to put some distance there, and the singer reacted badly. The singer didn't want to let go. She wants to believe she meant something. And maybe she did/does, or maybe she's just overinterpreting things.
It's open to interpretation, and that veiled quality is part of what makes it striking. There's also anger in it, hurt, need. It's obviously a personal song. The writer (whose sexual orientation I don't know) has said she was writing about her "high-school sweetheart." A lot more gay people were closeted or in denial even when the song was recorded in the mid '80s, let alone in the time period it presumably would be written about (the early '70s, going by when the writer would have been in high school).
I don't think the relationship is entirely in someone's head. I've always heard it as a lesbian singing to a friend who experimented with her when they were teenagers, to the point that the singer thought of them as girlfriends. But either it was never as serious to the other girl, or it was at odds with the conventional life she planned for herself. After high school, she got involved with a guy and tried to put some distance there, and the singer reacted badly. The singer didn't want to let go. She wants to believe she meant something. And maybe she did/does, or maybe she's just overinterpreting things.
It's open to interpretation, and that veiled quality is part of what makes it striking. There's also anger in it, hurt, need. It's obviously a personal song. The writer (whose sexual orientation I don't know) has said she was writing about her "high-school sweetheart." A lot more gay people were closeted or in denial even when the song was recorded in the mid '80s, let alone in the time period it presumably would be written about (the early '70s, going by when the writer would have been in high school).