The Truth About First Love (After The Emotions Have Faded)

I’ve always been the girl who knew she would wait until after high school to have a relationship. I practically had no valid reason to talk to the opposite sex, besides my closest guy friends. I chose to focus on school, to focus on sports, to focus on myself and take this time to be selfish. But then you came and ruined all of it.

Out of the blue, here you were with your sparkling smile and contagious laugh. Not even looking for someone to love, you subconsciously convinced me to fall for you, and boy did I fall hard. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, we were inseparable. You were my very best friend and the one person I never got tired of. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months turned into years of this crazy thing we called love, running around wild and free without a care in the world. We were unstoppable.

One day the seams began to rip. We hoped to recover from every tear that rolled down my face, we thought we would get stronger from the angry text messages and spiteful remarks, but we didn’t. Soon it was us against each other instead of us against the world.

There’s a lot more details that I choose to leave out because they just don’t matter anymore. We destroyed each other, and we were fully aware we were doing it. We rushed into this thing we called love while I had our whole wedding planned out on Pinterest and we were fighting over silly things that were years and years away.

I guess the truth is, I had to reshape my mind. I had to become my own hero and believe in myself. I had to rebuild everything including my foundation and I came back better than ever. I had to create an alternate future that didn’t involve you when I was so used to having every little detail planned out. I had to erase you from every place we went in the city I grew up in. I had to choose to believe that with any timing, in any world, in any universe, we would never work. I had to believe the only happy endings were without you.

So here is the deal. I wish you the best, from the deepest parts of my heart because I never hated you for the things you did to me, but I chose not to love you anymore. I hope you find everything you ever wanted in life, I hope you get what you deserve. We will both live our lives to the fullest because that’s the kind of people that we are, full of life. But someday I will see you again. Someday we will cross paths in the grocery store or we will be walking around the city making our way to work. Someday I will get to tell you how everything played out, and I hope you tell me too. Someday we will see each other and laugh because we were these stupid teenagers who were careless with each other’s hearts. We have moved on to different chapters, but yours is still a chapter I will keep even after all the nights of crying and tension filled conversations. There is not one thing I regret when it comes to you because you were my first love, and that is the truth.