To My First Love
"The first time you fall in love, it changes you forever and no matter how hard you try, that feeling just never goes away.”- Nicholas Sparks
We have all experienced the feeling of falling for our first love. It is the soul on fire, stomach in knots, short of breath, distressed emotions, words cannot describe it, kind of love. Our first love is what sets the stones of our foundation for our future and current relationships. It is the first person who we completely let our guard down for. Your first love is innocent, yet ready to test those boundaries you set for yourself. You cross limits you would never dream to cross before. You say things you did not know were capable of being said. You feel something inside of you, something you have never actually felt before. It is exhilarating, yet terrifying.
As a young child, I grew up watching all kinds of movies and TV shows where the lead has a love interest, and they have a dispute, but it mostly ends with a “happily ever after.” For example, The Notebook, The Last Song, A Cinderella Story, 13 Going on 30, A Walk to Remember, 27 Dresses, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and Sex in the City, all give you this false sense of hope of how love is supposed to play out. (There are obviously so many more romance/love story movies out there, but these were some that just came to my mind.) You grow up expecting to just find your soulmate strolling through the park on a Sunday, and the rest will play out from there. There are so many unrealistic expectations of what love is supposed to feel like and what love actually is. We grow up expecting to find someone who will move mountains for us, only to become disappointed when they will barely pick up a rock lying on the sidewalk.
Let’s rewind a little bit. I’m the type of girl who really felt insecure in elementary, middle, and most of high school. I always had a funny shaped haircut because A. it would not grow, B. I had a cowlick on the front of my bangs which looked awful, and C. I constantly took scissors to it when I was bored. (Yes this was a phase, an odd phase, but yes a phase.) I was a little odd. I had braces in middle school, and no those multi-colored braces bands on huge teeth were not cute. I wore some odd outfits because I never looked right in those girly, cute shirts that my sister could always pull off. I never wore makeup because I just was too lazy to get out of bed to do it, and my face was one that could be on a Proactiv commercial with all of my acne. Back then, an overpriced “Hollister” graphic tee shirt, some dark flare jeans, and tennis shoes were the fad. We were young teenagers, who spent too much time re-styling our MySpace profile pages, deciding who should be in our “Top Friends” category, searching for the perfect song to “describe” yourself when people clicked on your page. P.S. My first myspace song was “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani, probably because I did not understand the lyrics, I just enjoyed the woo hoo, yee hoo sounds. Never gets old.
I had some boys I talked to in middle school through texting and/or myspace, but I was just such an awkward duck around them in person. I was way too shy, not ever feeling comfortable having a real conversation in person. It was easier for me to show more of my inner self behind a screen.
My first experience with truly feeling like I loved someone all started back in August of 2009. I met this guy who was the complete opposite of me. I was definitely very insecure as a quirky 15 year old girl. I am still not sure why some older guy, who recently moved to my small town from Michigan would show any interest in me, but for some reason he did. He was this goofy, tall kid who wore his hats backwards, Air Jordans, and a Michigan Wolverines lanyard everywhere he went. He was different, which was intriguing to me. I like to think of myself as a “fixer.” I tend to find people with broken pieces in their lives and help them put it back together. I connected with this person on such an emotional level that it made me fall for him even harder. I felt like he needed to be loved, and he was easy to love. We officially started dating on October 2nd, 2009. No, I won’t forget the date because we wrote 10-2-09 on everything, you know because we were young and in love. We would write each other notes in class, and give them to each other during passing period. (We had cell phones, and could text, but we enjoyed this old-fashioned way to communicate. I still have these notes in a keepsake box somewhere at home.)
He was the new kid in a small-town school who was different from everyone. He did not come from the “drive your tractor to school day” type of town, so I felt like being around someone with a different background opened up my horizons to other places. I love to meet people from near and far, it helps me remember that there is more to life than small town Indiana. At first, I felt like with this person, I could truly be myself. I could be that weird, awkward girl and he did not judge me for it. As Dr. Seuss once quoted: “We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” I even had songs that reminded me of this person, the first one that I felt like connected to him is “Falling for You” by Colbie Caillat.
We went through a lot of tough times, some large enough to eventually end our relationship. He was trying to discover himself, adapt to the changes in his life as a new student in a new environment. We were different. We came from different backgrounds, different lifestyles. He wanted things from me I could not give. I wanted him to love me for who I was. I feel like a lot of that was lost throughout our relationship. We were young, and still learning how to navigate through life. I lost a lot of trust, which eventually led to feeling resentment from him because I could not trust him. Things were done that were unforgivable. It just happened that way. I lost myself completely. I spent time and time again crying, and begging for this person to love me and move mountains for me. I questioned everything about myself through all of this. I eventually grew tired, angry and had to let go completely. It was painful.
It has been over 10 years since I met, and fell for this person. These feelings we once had have faded away, and we have been left with a friendship that I will always cherish. We both live very separate lives, but we still talk every now and again. He has grown so much, into such a wonderful human and father to his two beautiful daughters. He is pursuing his dream of being an artist, and will only have more opportunities in his life to come. He always had big dreams and goals, and I know he will reach whatever dreams he sets his mind to. We have no ill-will or resentment towards each other at all. I just can’t find all the words I want to use to thank this person for all of the good (and bad) things that have happened between us. He helped me grow so much, and opened up my eyes to new horizons that I once never had seen. He is a person who has shaped my personality the most, because of him I discovered empathy, and being an empath is one of my greatest qualities. I wish him nothing but the best in his life. It really puts into perspective how much time flies. It feels like just yesterday we were walking around the neighborhood, claiming a tree to be “our tree,” and passing paper notes back and forth to each other in the hallway. Thank you Brandon, for being such an impact in my life 10 years ago, even all the way up to today.
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