People say that you’ll eventually get over a breakup, which is true. You’ll find that there’ll be days where you don’t think about your ex, and those days will turn into weeks, and months, and then years. Every now and then, you’ll run across something during your everyday routine that reminds you of that ex, but it won’t affect you as much as it would have if that wound was still healing. However, what they don’t tell you is how the underlying damage that came with that relationship will never truly heal.

I was fifteen when I got into my first relationship. I was both excited yet naïve about the experiences I’ll have. We started things slow-ish, in terms of our society. We did everything except for sex, since I was still a virgin at the time. A month after he asked me to be his girlfriend, he told me he loved me. I smiled and stayed quiet. He got confused when I didn’t say it back and informed me that “usually the other person says it back.” So I said it, unsure of my feelings. Two days later, I lost my virginity. I don’t know if him saying that he loved me was his motive to have sex with me, but looking at it now, it was a huge red flag for me to have said it that early.

A year went by and I started my first job at the age of sixteen. I worked nights right after school so I didn’t have a lot of free time, aka, no time for my boyfriend. He wasn’t too happy about that. When I wanted to spend time with my coworkers, he seemed upset. He made me feel guilty about wanting to hang out with my friends by making it seem as if I didn’t love him. I wanted to show him that I did love him, so I neglected my friends. I spent most of my free time with him, and I even tried using my parents as an excuse as to why I couldn’t hang out that day, which didn’t really work. There were days that I just wanted to be by myself, but he wouldn’t let that happen. I should have spoken up sooner, but I feel as though I would have been guilted into him again. Even with sex, I was doing it to make him happy. When I didn’t, he got mad, saying I didn’t love him - you see a common occurrence here. He was pushy about it, saying that my parents won’t hear us. So I let him have sex with me. This was near the end of our relationship and it ended when he told me he didn’t trust me after hanging out with my male coworkers. This was my way out and I took it. I cried, but only because I thought I was going to be alone forever, but I still ended it.

I figured that this was just a bad relationship. I know people went through them, but I didn’t think it was going to affect me as much as it does now. After him, I got around. Love and sex didn’t go hand and hand for me. Yes, society was changing and women were having sex “like men”, which I was all for. Sex is fun, but it turned into a game for me. It was fun to see that I could get any guy that I wanted to come home with me. It inflated my ego, but that’s not the way to explore your sexuality.

I met a guy two years after my ex and I really had feelings for him, and so did he. Still at that time, I wasn’t looking for anything. However, the feelings I had for him was weird to me. I hadn’t felt those feelings for so long and they seemed new to me, but I was scared. I was scared of the possessiveness. I was scared of him losing trust in me. I was scared of just getting hurt. To counteract this, I hurt him instead. I ended things because of my own fear that my past would repeat itself. I eventually did settle down with another guy, but ended things for the fear of getting hurt because I felt him losing interest. It still didn’t hurt any less for either of us. I might have called it all wrong, or maybe I was just scared of something that I really couldn’t pinpoint. I just ran away.

As of now, I’m not actively seeking out a relationship. If it happens, it happens. I’m just so afraid of messing it up-- that somehow my past will come up again and I’ll scare him off or I’ll scare myself off. Relationships are nice but there’s so much vulnerability that can happen when there’s that title, and I guess I just feel safe as a friends with benefits. Even then, you can still get hurt so there’s really no winning there either. I just don’t want to be safe for the rest of my life. I want to branch out. I want to be pushed to do something that I’m afraid of and learn to grow from that experience. I want to be outside of my comfort zone. I want to stop being so afraid of something that happened four damn years ago to come back and throw my whole world into a loop. I want to be that fifteen year old girl again. Before the sex, before the relationship, before the fooling around, when everything was so much easier.