Your first love is weird. You think it’s going to last forever, but it only lasts in a matter of seconds strung out into elongated moments. And then it ends, just like that. When I was sixteen it seemed simple to me; I was young and naive and I had more faith in romantic indie films and holding hands than you would ever believe.

At a first glance, it seemed infinite. But looking back after these past six years, I can see it for how it really was – and that’s kind of sad. I’m not wise and I’m not old. I’m a 21-year-old college student, but I do know what it’s like to fall in love and still cling onto those moments because there is just too much history to push aside. I can’t do something like that.

Nobody can, even if you are a superhuman or whatever. In the end, we all obtain the same basic emotion, the kind that lingers inside of us and still manages to seep out even in our most vulnerable times.

I’ve been doing this a lot lately. Thinking about love, reminiscing on my previous boyfriends, contemplating the idea about who I’m going to end up with next. I’m content with being where I am right now, and that is living a completely secular lifestyle. But at the same time, I can’t help but wonder . . . and that is because the root cause is lead back to my first love. Oh, first love. I hate you so much sometimes.

I think about you here and there throughout my day, at night, or when I’m awake at two in the morning listening to something that we used to talk about and get excited over. I’m not trying to live in a fantasy, and it’s not as if I haven’t attempted to move on. I have come exceptionally far and I am so proud of myself. In the past year and a half, I’ve gone on dates, I’ve kissed other guys, I’ve gone on new adventures, even turned guys down because I knew I deserved better.

I never rebounded to anyone or anything or looked for comfort in beings materialistically. I just lived my life the way that anyone would after their first love disappeared into thin air. But I guess, the thing is, you didn’t really dissolve into thin air. You merely left with obvious intentions, and with me sitting on my bed staring in complete confusion. And that didn’t matter. You made it clear that you wanted to keep me away, keep us away, and that’s what exactly happened.

When you have a first love, there is no way in getting rid of that. Your first love will be your first love until you die, and that is both a blessing and a curse. I think it’s a blessing because there is some sort of silver lining to claiming a good memory or two – or millions. When you’re comfortable enough, you can be humble about it, have a light laugh and then move on with your day.

But I get really melancholy sometimes because I remember that they have this hold on me. It’s not permanent, but the boy who hurt me a consecutive amount of times, and in the worst ways ever – will be my first love. There is no escaping it and that scares me a little. Even though we are miles apart and we no longer speak, I feel as though he has this claim on me. I can really let go if I want to, and that’s what people say.

However, if you’ve never fallen in love, you won’t understand. It’s not that simple. You can’t just “let go” completely. It’s not just a “somebody” that you mindlessly dated for a few months before you broke up. This was your best friend. This was your deliciously wonderful, powerful romance of all romances. I’m sorry, but nobody can take that away.

Again – a beautiful blessing, and such a cruel curse.

I used to be so hard on myself, and I still am. You’re surrounded by signs, books, the social media, movies, even people – to move on and just live your life without always looking back. Live in the moment, why don’t you? So when it all ended, and my feelings for him still lingered, I would scold myself and after a year, I figured that there must have been something wrong with me. Either I wasn’t trying hard enough to let go, that I was psychotic, or that I was just really really attached and a sensitive human being. While all of those are false except one, it was very normal to feel what I was feeling.

“I don’t understand why I think about him”.
“I don’t understand why I see him almost everywhere in at least one thing each day”.
“I don’t understand why I dream about him. We’ve been broken up for years”.

Those are the things that I would think about, and they would consume me. I just wanted to be happy and move on, and genuinely smile like those young women you would see in those chick flicks after a break up. The part where they, y’know, find themselves’? I knew that in real life, it was going to be harder than that. But I didn’t realize that I would still be dreaming about him in my sleep at age 21, after not communicating for over a year. I feel like such a broken record. I daydream, contemplate, whatever, and the old sepia pictures play in my head- snapping like a camera through all of the good times. I wish that I didn't have such a vivid memory, because the details of it make it that much more consuming. But these days, it's become more tolerable. It has become so consistent that I don't even think of it as a shock anymore - the think about him from time to time. It's become a regular part of my thought process . . . and that's kind of embarrassing to admit. But whatever. I guess I'm starting to come to a point that it's normal to think about someone who was a part of your life for six years and truly made an impact on your teenage and young adult days. I just kept convincing myself that there was something extremely wrong with me, because you sits and pines over someone who hurt you so many times? And who thinks about an ex boyfriend who you haven't communicated with in over a year? And then my friend told me the obvious:

“You never stop loving your first love”.
“I hate this. I don’t like this. What is wrong with me? Why do I keep having dreams though? He probably doesn’t dream about me…”
“Maybe he does. I wouldn’t doubt that he does”.
“Why?”
“Because you’re wonderful and he was lucky to love you”.

And then I went on talking about how he didn’t love me because if you love someone, you don’t give up on them so easily, and so many times for that matter. But either way, it made sense. You really never do stop loving your first – and for me, I naturally love hard. I kind of already knew this, but there is something about having someone say it to you to actually understand it. I loved him. Maybe it’s also because I’ve never had a first love before – obviously – and this was brand new to me. I had the first love, and that was all brand new. And now, now that’s it’s all done, I’m experiencing the part where I have to endure life reminiscing about my first love and question why I think about him all the time. And the times where he was so horrible to me in the mental aspect of things. My family and my best friends saw what kind of pain he put me through, and wondered how he could have been so foolish to do such a thing. Then there was the part where I was foolish into wanting his love so desperately again, through all the times he broke me down. You think "Why do you still love him then?" and I would say back "I just do". There's no way in erasing those genuine moments that were stitched in between those heartbreaking moments of disappointment and anguish. Not everything was horrible, and I can't help but scan back on the times where he told me that he loved me, and that he wanted to get an apartment with me with two dogs, and we watched movies all the time and ate pizza rolls 'til we were bloated, and went to all those high school dances together. I can't just ignore all of that - for me, there was something there. Something strong . . . for me, anyway. You can't escape love. It is what it is. I know none of it makes sense, and it probably doesn't make sense that I'm writing this today. But there's this clarity in it - in a first love.

And then it’s there: You just never stop.