Dealing with your first love is a tough one. Their importance and impact is, to this day, almost still unmatched. Whatever the age, can you be 17 or 27, there’s a little something about this crush that remains, lingers from within, still sometimes keep you awake at night and floods your thoughts with never-ending what if scenarios. If you’re feeling any of these symptoms, fortunately or not, you’ve proved to not be immune to cupid’s first mix and match game on you — for the better or the worst.
Speaking at length, love, in my opinion, is always a losing game. There’s always someone that ends up giving more than they actually receive, and that’s still applicable after the end of that given relationship.
Your time with that person is well over and yet you’re still deeping the fact that “it was never your girl, it was just your turn” even x amount of years after you broke up. Sometimes, you might even be seeing someone else, but for some reason, you still crave them, for what they were, or still are, the nostalgia or the idea of a sugar coated make up. But let’s face it though, both of you have taken separate ways and you’re still struggling to love someone without feeling guilty of sometimes thinking of them. And after some reflection, it should be okay to feel that way. Here’s why:
If you’re asking for my honest opinion, unless you’re special special, there’s only a handful of people that can compete with that ex. Obviously, you’re young and making your first few steps in the real world as an adult, and that person is there with you through every step. They’re the first person you opened up to, the first to whom you revealed your scars or experienced life through another true perspective. Put it this way, there was no scale before them, so naturally, whatever comes after will automatically be scaled around them.
Depending on the breakup, more times than not, that story of yours ended in a bad way. Given the intensity of it, no surprise you cried them a river. And I’m no different, but with time I grew into looking at it as learning curve, through its ups and downs.
It’s done and things are always going to feel different, whoever you’re with. Truth is, even if you got back with them, it probably won’t hit the nail on the head like it used to. It could be better, or worse, but let’s keep it real, these are all assumptions and not tangible realities. Take what you can from it and suck it up because there’s no other option.
Call it stoicism or anything else you like, because at the end of the day, that’s the only time you probably navigated humankind’s most infectious grey zone so naively. So nodding back to it every so often will never hurt. And that even if it comes with a reminiscence, through the image of an old friend you no longer know.
I often wonder whether I’ll think of them the day I, for my grandma’s sake, will get married to someone else. And maybe I will, and that idea bothered me for a long time. If they picked up the phone and asked me for a second chance, I don’t know what I would say or even reply if I felt like it, and frankly I can’t spend a lifetime waiting on that unexpected text to come through not even knowing what it would even lead to. But as of right now, what I know is that things are over and I’m happy to see them grow, win and prosper, although it is from afar. And who knows, maybe I won’t be the only one thinking of someone else when hopefully tying the knot someday.
Photo courtesy from “Drôle” by Fanny Herrero
