They say if you love something set it free and if it comes back, it's yours.

We all have that one person. The one person we always go back to. Mine happens to be Cody.

"Is he your boyfriend?" I'm not really sure what to call him right now, but we're trying to work things out.

We started dating in the eighth grade and now as a junior in college, you could say we've been through some rough patches in our relationship. Came together, fell apart and broke each other's hearts. We even dated other people.

This last time that we have gotten back together has been different. For starters, we didn't jump back into a relationship. We talked. We laughed. We cried. We tried to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it not just jump back into the old mess because we missed each other.

From the moment we started talking again I knew there would be a tremendous amount of judgment. My first reaction was fear. What would my mom think? My friends? His friends and family? But I get it, to everyone else our relationship was one big mess and I'd be beyond stupid to actually take him back after the hell he put me through and had this not been me, had it been someone else's relationship that I was watching from the outside, I'd agree. I never understood how a girl could take her ex back like it was nothing. But then it happened to me.

Cody has made his mistakes but until you know what it's like to date someone with depression you truly can't understand how that can affect someone in a relationship.

Dating someone for seven years (starting in 8th grade) you grow up with them. You see them at their ugly middle school days, awkward high school phases and even the rollercoaster college years. As I sat there on the phone with him, I realized that no matter what changes I had undergone during our break, I couldn't erase him. He had really helped me understand who I was as a person.

And now, breaking up (and getting back together), he helped me realize that a relationship does not have to be all-consuming, but just because you and your significant other are having problems, that does not mean you have to break up. Now for those of you who have completely disagreed with me getting back with Cody and for those who say "Well he's just going to hurt you again" I'll remember that whenever we're planning our guest list for the wedding one day.

But for those who believed in us, for those that encouraged us and supported us the past seven years, Thank you. It means the world to the both of us because negativity has only made things harder on our relationship.

But you're not prohibited from trying to rekindle if you're both willing to do what is necessary. It doesn't matter what your friends think - they don't know what will make your relationship work because they are not you. And the very last thing that I want to hear is how wrong I am. I don't want to hear how if it was you, you wouldn't have gotten back together with him. That's the thing, it isn't you. This is about me. There is nobody out there who knows how I felt throughout the situation or knows exactly what I went through. Therefore, there is no one else who make comments on my situation until the same thing happens to them. I've come to realize that I am 21-years-old and capable of making these decisions without anybody else's approval.

So while it's important to know when to walk away from a relationship, it's equally important to know when it's okay to stay or to return.