If you were to ask the younger me what I thought about love, you would get the sickest puppy dog lies that screamed young and naïve. Young and naïve that would translate into young and in love. Young and in love is the new cliché. We see past high school peers who did it themselves all the time and it’s sickening. Go ahead, and look on Facebook and see how they’ve had a child by twenty years old and have already been divorced by twenty-two. I am not going to lie and say that I was the hero that rose to the occasion and put his foot down and screamed from the top of his lungs, “Love can wait!" but with hopes of starting a new trend, to avoid hurtful losses.

I was the opposite. I was your typical teeny bopper who wanted to love everyone and be loved by everyone. I personally went from person to person breaking hearts and taking names while screen watching "The Notebook," and wondering why my life couldn’t be that interesting. I longed at any given time to have a ring on the left hand and throw everything away for love because life was all about love, right?

I wish I knew the answer when I was young, but let’s just say I needed to be cracked over the head a couple of times to come to that realization. Unfortunately, I had to learn this lesson the hardest and most painful way possible, which in my opinion was karma's way of getting me back from my policy of "breaking hearts and taking names."

Even though I longed for love, I knew it couldn’t possibly happen to me at a young age. I was naïve which we can all agree with, naïve on many screwed up levels. But I managed to find “the one,” yes you read me correctly, the one. No one could replace “the one,” no one could ever think to pull “the one” away from me, and of course, like any fairytale, “the one” and I would live happily ever after with birds singing and all my enemies in the background crying and weeping as I rode away in my horse and buggy.

If you think I am kidding, I am not, and if you’re laughing right now, then great, that means you can understand that being young and in love makes you the idiot in front of everyone at the “Not in Love Table.” All those happy hormones running through your brain completely drug you into thinking everything will work out, instead of looking at the areas where it could go wrong. If you think I am wrong, look at every romantic movie in the world. Jack and Rose from "Titanic" believed their love would still go on like Celine Dion when the ship was only sticking three feet from the water, Satine and Christian thought they could still sing, dance, and love at the Moulin Rouge when Nicole Kidman is coughing up blood and passing out left and right and just saying “Oh don’t worry, it’s the silly costumes.” I mean we have to take a minute and realize that in any situation, love can and will make you look like an idiot in a crowded room full of people who already know the answer.

Love makes us weak and yet stronger at the same time, it’s the biggest travesty to our body if you think about it. They make us weak in our decision-making process and yet make us strong in our self-esteem issues. Sometimes I look at the whole idea of love and think, did we tick God off when he made us? To give us this ability to love and feel all this happiness but at the same time have it completely destroy us within seconds?

I’m probably sounding pessimistic but that’s probably because I just fell out of love, but don’t worry, give me a minute, once I fall in love with someone else then this article is going to take a huge spin around.

So yes, I was the one who was in love and making horrible decisions. Decisions that made me lose who I was in the process. Take for example, I am a very outgoing and outspoken person who stays up all night just to have fun and live life. But the moment I got into a serious relationship? Ha! I went from being young as a 19-year old to a 45-year-old house wife who drinks wine, sews and couldn't wait to go to bed at 8:30 because book club is tomorrow and we were discussing something super risky…"Fifty Shades of Grey"! I became the person we as teens made fun of. I lost who I was, I became someone so different just to please the person I was in love with. So who was changing who? Was love changing me or was it the guy I was with?

We can never really know the true answer to this because maybe it could’ve been both? Maybe cupid was in a tree about to sniper me at any given moment while “the one” was silently changing me without knowing it. The conspiracy lives on and no one will know.

These changes that were happening, I didn’t know about them. I was so oblivious to all of it because I was struck by love so much that the logic part of my brain was hilariously laughing at me for my stupid decisions. Picture the “Inside Out” cast laughing up a storm, which would be a perfect example of what was going on.

The thing about love is that you start to forget your friends. Yes your friends, do you remember them? The ones that you told all of your most embarrassing stories too, the ones who held your hair when you puked, and the ones who brought you wine because you fail at life sometimes? The people that are more loyal than any young love could ever imagine, yes those are the people you forget! You are so wrapped up in love with one person that you fail to see the others who love you too. It’s a sick and cruel joke that only hurts you in the end but you’re so blind by it all you can’t even see it.

Well, I did that to my friends. Left them in the wind because I was so sure that who I had would be my friend forever. As I type this, just know I am so disappointed in myself for being this naïve back in the good ole' days. Just know I am mentally ripping my eye balls out and throwing them away.

Loyalty is another issue. You’re only seeing rainbows and sunshine that you think the person you’ve invested your life and soul into would never cheat or do anything disloyal to you. If you really believe that then lets take a look at male anatomy. Men have this wonderful organ that they honestly, truly, without a doubt will love for the rest of their life… and that’s it folks. Now as a guy myself I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing men, but let's be real here, as a man I can agree with that statement because it’s true in some ways. For the ones who are reading this and thinking “That’s not my man!” I just want to ask you this, “How old are you? And how naïve are you?” All I’m saying is be aware and not like the old me who thought it could never happen because trust me, never say never. Also, I am not saying this is every guy, but in my generation in which people are getting married at an older age because they want to play around a lot longer, you have to be aware.

So without noticing, I lost who I was and all of my friends that made me the real me. Let's the curtain pull back and let's see how the next scene unfolds. So picture me all happy with rosy cheeks and birds on my should singing and talking to me, now picture the guy I was with. Yes, I bet you’re thinking six-foot-tall and six-pack and that’s all right with me, and thank you for picturing someone so hot because there is no way I could actually score a six-foot six-pack hunk, but hey, that shows you care. Now picture me having a horrible surgery in which I cannot walk for a week. Yes storms and sadness weeps the castle but the Prince (aka “the one”) says he must leave because heaven forbid he had to sit on a couch and Netflix and binge. This should’ve been a red flag but being in love I ignored it. So the Prince leaves the castle and the young naïve boy waits, and waits, and waits for him to return. Only to find out he didn’t go to the “gym” but he went to a party and said horrible things about you and cheated on you with your ex-lover.

Mic drop and drop the curtain. That was my fairytale. Three years of being in love and naïve and where did it get me? A broken heart and a surgery to recoup all by myself. I felt I went mad, because the thing about having your heart broken is, you still want them back. You’re so drunk with love that you would actually take them back just so the pain will stop for a minute. But for the first time in three years, I let the logic part of my brain take over and squish out the love sick part of my brain.

It took me months to realize what actually happened. Once the love fades and reality comes back, you have to take a moment and see the damage you created under the sick drug. How you became such a different person you don’t even recognize anything that you do anymore. This makes you feel even crazier because without our identity, then we are unable to be happy for who we are and if you can’t answer the question of who you are, then you’re in a world of hurt and confusion.

Being young and in love is a horrible idea, horrible because once you feel the true pain of heartbreak you never want to go back. But you see, that’s the love talking, when love has been rejected, it does the complete opposite, it makes you whiny and talk crap about love. But once the drug fades and the smarter part of your brain comes back to the party, you start to realize that all the stupid decisions you made are the most normal decisions anyone could’ve made. You’re going to make stupid decisions in life—that is unavoidable—but it’s how we learn from those decisions that makes us who we are meant to be in the future.

I could still be in the dark hating the guy who broke me, but I decided not to. I looked at what I did and fixed what I could and said what my grandmother has been saying to me for 22 years and that is “Shit Happens.”

Young and love is a bad idea, but…it’s unavoidable. If you really think about it, it’s great that it's unavoidable. Maybe we all need to have our hearts broken a time or two to realize who we really are and not to make those same mistakes again. We all need that first love and the fallout from it to make us more mature in a way. This is not a hate piece of love, this are the mistakes you can make along the way and how we can learn from them. Love is a drug that we all wish to have and experience, but sometimes we are so eager to have a taste of love that we sometimes jump in too soon. Too soon to understand the back lash that it could cause. Too young to believe it could ever go wrong. Too naïve to understand of how badly it could hurt you. But that's life, we are suppose to make these decisions and get hurt from them because without these decisions we wouldn't be who we were meant to be.

Being young and in love is a bittersweet gift. A bittersweet gift that is unavoidable and yet the best times we could ever ask for. Even though we are in pain, ask your self, would you take all the happy memories back? Would you take all the horrible decisions you made and throw them away and pretend they never happened? If you want to throw them away, just know throwing them away doesn't help you grow, it keeps you the same person you were before. Take the love, take the pain and hold it close and just know, with life, there is always part two.