We always hope that our first love will be our last love and for some lucky people, that's true. More often than not, that isn't the case. Everyone remembers their first love, whether it's the memories that you created or the things you learned, your first love is special. However, the road to realizing that is not an easy one.

The anger and pain you feel may be one of the worst things in the whole world. The combination of crying with vomiting to screaming at the top of your lungs, wondering what you did wrong and why he left, even though he promised he never would. It's the feeling of emptiness mixed with the fact that you're all alone. The one person who was by your side decided that you weren't good enough anymore.

I remember seeing the first picture he had posted on Facebook after we had broken up. He looked so happy and I remember it killing me on the inside. How could he be so happy while I'm here wondering what went wrong or what I did?

The memories are the worst part. You have so many memories with one person and that's what makes it so hard to move on. Whether it was the first movie you watched together to your favorite ice cream place... some things are just never the same, and for a while, leave a nasty taste in your mouth. You wonder if they feel the same or if they've forgotten about you.

But somehow, one day, everything changes. The pain you felt is a little less and you realized that you didn't need them as much as you thought-- that maybe they were even a little toxic to you.

What I took from my first love is that you need to love yourself. You need to understand who you are as a person before you can learn to love anyone else. I lost myself, my passions, and what I really wanted in life because I was completely focused on what he wanted in life and what he wanted me to be. I never realized there was more in the world (well, until he broke up with me). I realized that I didn't do anything wrong. If I could go back and tell my 17-year-old self to just wait and see, I would. That girl was heartbroken and scared, and didn't know which way was up. But if I could tell her that everything was going to be okay, and that he was a stupid boy, and that in a couple years this would teach you so much, and that this was just part of the plan... I would.

You will always be my first love but not my last. Your love taught me more than you know, but what you don't know is that my last love is the person who deserves it the most. Who I somehow love more than I ever thought was possible. He keeps the promises that you broke and shows me (for real) that he is here to stay. That all those negative and terrible things you did lead me straight to him because you showed me that I deserved more than you and that he was out there.

Sitting here now, looking back on everything, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for everything you did, from being there for me to becoming part of my crazy family, when you definitely didn't have to. Thank you for being my first love and for letting me be open with another person.

The biggest thank you, however, is for breaking up with me. Thank you for doing it because I know that 17-year-old me wouldn't have, but needed to. Thank you letting me grow without you. Thank you for letting use all my trial-and-error on you so when the love of my life came, I knew how to be part of a relationship.