Falling in love for the first time is a unique and impacting feeling. No matter how our first true relationships end, we carry the memories we shared with that person for the rest of our lives. It’s a time of innocence, excitement, new adventures — arguably the essence of what being young is all about.

We use the lessons we learned from that relationship to set the guidelines for the rest of our future romances to come. It’s from this person that we figure out what we want and what we don’t want in a partner. It's crazy how much we learn about ourselves by seeing how we love another person.

No matter the turnout, your first love will always have a place in your heart because it is with this person that you first experienced what it’s like to be stupidly happy. It is this person that made you start thinking that maybe, just maybe, this fairytale stuff isn’t a load of crap after all. It is with your first love that you felt for the first time like you could walk on clouds — and nobody can replace that feeling.

First loves are so wonderful and so enlivening, and that’s why it sucks so much when they fall apart— but don’t be discouraged. Losing your first love is so, so necessary.

Now I realize that once in a blue moon there are these super couples who've been dating for what seems to be a million years and are still going strong somehow. I realize that sometimes it works. I realize that sometimes people are lucky enough to get it right the first time. If you're in your first real relationship right now with your first love, and you believe you're going to be one of those exceptions, then I wish you the best of luck. Honestly. More power to you.

But listen.

The odds are, you are not one of those exceptions.

First loves are a brief flame: you two are a spark, burning bright and brilliant, speeding down a much-too-short wick, and, the odds are, you will inevitably reach the dynamite. It'll end so quickly and so out-of-nowhere that it'll feel like an explosion. That's why it's so hard to come out of these things unscathed, regardless of if you got broken up with or if you're the one who did the breaking.

When it ends — when the dynamite hits — it hurts. Gosh, does it hurt. Probably more than any pain you've ever felt before. But it's OK. You may not realize it now, but this is not the end; it's a new beginning. You may not believe me now, but sometimes a heart has to break in order for it to finally be free.

This is why losing your first love is such a necessary pain. It's one of the very few pains in this world that can break you down to your weakest point. Losing something that was so vital to your happiness tears down your walls so low to the ground that your only option is to start over, pick up the pieces and build something new, something different, something stronger.

You've spent all this time investing yourself so deeply into this other person, and into his or her thoughts and opinions, trying to be everything that person wants. You've spent all this time sacrificing and compromising pieces of yourself, probably without even noticing it because you think it's the right thing to do, because it'll make the one you love happy. But don't you realize it now? You've spent all this time settling.

That's something you should never have to do, not for anyone. But that's just how it works with first loves. We rush into it, no brakes, gas pedal pressed to the floor, speeding into this new, exciting place we've never been. When we finally see that it's not the right path for us, we're already so far from where we came from that we feel it's too late to turn back.

It's never too late. Never think, "Well, we've been dating for X amount of months, so I can't just give up." Yes you can, and it's not giving up either. It's simply realizing that you need to think of yourself for a change. Besides, sometimes strength is not about enduring pain, but about having the courage to walk away from it.

Now it's over, it's sad, it hurts and it sucks. But now you're free to be and do anything you want, without worrying what someone else thinks about it.

Trust me, you will pick yourself up, and you will be surprised by how strong you truly are. You will learn to appreciate the life you shared with your first love, but you will also learn how much you truly love life without them. You'll learn to love your second, third and fourth loves in a more mature, less destructive way. You'll learn to love your friends. Most importantly, you'll learn to love yourself. That's why losing your first love is so necessary.