dear first love,
for the longest time i thought i was weird because i never really felt like i could so much as even like someone romantically. i would hear my friends talk about their crushes or boys they dated and feel like i was missing out, like i was the odd one out because i didn't feel crazy about any boy i knew. i thought surely there must be something wrong with me; i can't even experience the most human emotion of love.
then one day in the tenth grade, my friends started talking about this new boy they became friends with, asking if i knew him. i hadn't, and i hadn't even known we got new kids in our grade. i have always been the type of person that, unless spoken to, pretty much just stuck to my own group. then randomly he introduced himself to me and said he knew my friends. i said, "cool," and that was that. i was expecting to never speak to him again until we got seated together for a class. that was the start of what i now would say was my first heartbreak.
from that day on, he never stopped talking to me. he once even asked me to send him my lock screen, and when i asked why, he just told me to send it. when i did, i watched him set it as his own and just quietly show me that now we were matching. i later came to find out that he kept it for the whole summer and didn't change it until i did the following school year. i never really said anything; i thought it was strange. many people did, but he never said anything about it, so why would i ? then when the following year did come, i thought we wouldn't ever really talk again, maybe just say hi while passing each other in the hallway, but we actually ended up having another class together. this time, though, he had no reason to sit by me. the seats weren't assigned, and his best friend (to this day) was in the same class. obviously i thought he would sit by him, and that was fine with me. i wanted to sit in the corner alone anyway, so no one would bother me, but he didn't; he chose to sit right next to me. once again i thought it was strange, but i didn't question it; i let him sit by me even though he would get us in trouble for never shutting up, for being too loud, even though he would get me in trouble because the teacher thought i was the one talking and not him. it annoyed me, but i never told him to sit elsewhere.
then something happened that i think fundamentally changed me as a person. it was an unusually quiet class; everyone seemed to actually be doing their work for once except us. it seemed like we were sitting unusually close to each other, whispering almost in each other's faces when he randomly told me, "you know, i don't know why, but you make me feel different." the atmosphere felt very weird, so i wasn't even sure of what to say, i just sat there until he continued, "yeah, i don't know why you make me feel like 'this,' but i've never felt like 'this' with anyone else but you. i don't even talk this much with anyone else, but i feel like i'm always talking with you. i don't know why you make me feel different." i was so confused, and i couldn't even say anything for a few seconds, and when i finally did, all i could say was, "what?" till this day, i think that's my biggest regret. he just looked at me and said, "never mind." i don't think we even spoke for the rest of that class period.
since that day i looked at him very differently. whenever people would ask if we liked each other or tease us, or when his friends would bother us about it, i watched for his reaction closely because after that conversation, those comments stopped being funny. still, i refused to admit i liked him. i thought about him every day and even wished he would like me, and still i swore i felt nothing towards him. maybe it was fear of rejection; if i admitted i liked him, that opened up the possibility of being rejected by him, or maybe it was a fear of letting go of a part of me, the part that swore i never felt anything towards anyone because regardless of how much i hated that part of myself, it was still all i knew. who knows ? maybe it was both. regardless, i graduated, never admitting anything.
even when i spent the following two years after graduation praying to see him again, just once more, to have one final opportunity to see his face again, i denied even to myself the possibility of feelings towards him. even when i dreamt of reuniting and him confessing his undying love for me, i laughed and said i was just lonely, that it had nothing to do with him, and that the dream could've been about anyone.
then one day we did reunite. two years later, and somehow he agreed to hang out with my friend and me. it wasn't like my dreams; i wasn't my magical ideal self. he didn't suddenly confess to having feelings for me, but still i had fun. i didn't realize how much i missed even just being his friend until we spent the whole five hours competing against each other in every game imaginable. but still in the bottom of my heart, a very evil part of me was thinking that maybe his actions did mean something, that maybe when he only focused on me, and only teased me, and took pictures of me when i wasn't looking, and when he said, "this feels like a daydream," that maybe it meant something and i wasn't crazy.
still, obviously i couldn't admit i liked him. yes, i came back with my heart racing and my hands still trembling from when i put his wristband on him, but that meant nothing. yes, i spent the following week after hoping he would text me and ask to hang out again, maybe this time just the two of us, but that didn't mean anything. it wasn't until my friend stayed over and it was late at night and we were both between sleeping and awake that i just felt like i had a lump in my throat, like i wanted to say something but wasn't sure if i should, because she would be the first person to find out what he said to me, and something about that no longer being something only i knew scared me so deeply, but still the lump in my throat scared me more, and i told her exactly what happened in that weird conversation. it wasn't until she validated that i was right to think it was weird, that in fact it further confirmed her suspicions that he liked me, that i could finally admit to myself that i liked him. i couldn't even keep it to myself for long because the day after, when we finally woke up, i kept it to myself for approximately an hour before finally confessing i liked him. i lied and said it wasn't a big crush, still trying to preserve some self-dignity, but i think i so badly craved the experience of gossiping about crushes, the girlhood experience i missed out on that i had to tell her.
i spent the rest of that month being both so self-aware and delusional that i was probably the physical embodiment of a juxtaposition. i told myself if he hasn't texted in weeks, then there was clearly nothing there while also saying, "well, you never know...." simply because i didn't want to think that everything that happened could've genuinely meant nothing to him. then, of course, i got the worst news imaginable ! my friend sent me a screenshot of his story where he soft launched his girlfriend...right, okay...and guess what ? it was the same girl i saw in his following list that i literally said, "i could see them dating," to...call it women's intuition, i don't know...either way, i was heartbroken.
and what better way to deal with heartbreak ?? get drunk ! obviously i regret doing this now, but it wasn't on purpose either. i ended up going to a quince literally the night of finding out, so i drank and then drank some more until my sister and i had to leave early because i was crying and throwing up. i wasn't blackout drunk; i could still tell what was happening and how much of an embarrassment i was being, but what's worse is that the only thing i could think about was how sad i was. no matter how much i tried to hold in my tears, i couldn't stop them from coming out, and every time they did, i felt like the most unlovable person alive simply because one boy got a girlfriend.
i felt so stupid, like i was being so delusional, and in part i know i was. i admitted to it, but i also know that from the very start i had always said i never felt like he really liked me. yes, most of it was insecurity, but i was also being realistic about what i knew. he could act however he wanted, say whatever he wanted, but it means nothing until he tells me to my face that he likes me. i always knew that, but still i made myself out to be the dumbest person alive. i called myself pathetic, a loser, an idiot, desperate, embarrassing, and disgusting, so many horrible things, when my biggest crime had been falling in love.
i longed to fall in love since childhood, and when i finally did, i hated myself for it. in what way was that fair ?
the next few days were hard; everything was about him, the songs on my playlist, the once familiar stops to my house that were now tainted with his presence because he lived nearby, and the night drives in the car looking out the window when my heart felt like it was being ripped apart. all of those were somehow about him. he got a girlfriend, and for the next few days i really thought i would die, and then one day i just told myself i didn't want to live like that anymore. maybe it was the youtube essays or the endless tweets on my feed, but as i did the dishes, i just came to the realization that i didn't really care anymore. that isn't to say that i didn't love him anymore; even now i still do, but i no longer cared for the way he made me feel. for how sad he made me, or how unlovable i felt when i thought about him, i no longer cared about all the horrible things he made me feel about myself.
sure, maybe i was just coping, forcing myself to push away my feelings and say i was okay, but it helped. once i realized that i was just allowing myself to dwell in the sadness, thinking about him became a lot less of a routine and more like an annoying but minuscule part of my week.
yes, i'm still sad. yes, i still wish that my first love had not been an unrequited one, but i no longer allow myself to linger in the "what ifs." i no longer allow myself to dwell on what he could've possibly meant by "different" or what he wanted to come from it. i no longer beat myself up over having thought about him. instead, when i think about him or that conversation or the hangout that i prayed for and now hate, i just think, "hm, weird," and move on because at the end of the day, i could think about him eight years from now, and that does not negate any of the progress i have made.
i've also realized that thinking about people is just who i am; it's something that i've hated about myself for a long time. i thought i would be miserable forever because of this, because i never forgot anyone i got close to, because no matter how many years passed, i would still think about them. but that's just who i am. i am someone who loves very deeply, and loving deeply comes with thinking of the other person. that's something i cannot change, but what i can change is whether i allow myself to ruminate and suffer in those thoughts or allow myself to, for once, move on.
in the same way that i punish myself for loving, i think i also punish myself for moving on. i think that because loving is such a sacred feeling for me, when i do experience it, it has to stay with me forever, and so when i attempt to move on, i feel as though i am giving up rather than preserving my well-being. i feel as though i am a failure, and that is something i refuse to be. but i will never be okay unless i allow myself to move on without repercussions.
fun fact: he's why i made this blog in the first place. he made me so sad that i needed somewhere to put all that sadness, somewhere i could say everything i wanted to say without bothering anyone, and that somewhere became this blog. eventually this blog became less about him and more about me.
it's weird to say a boy allowed me to grow in this way, especially one who has probably not thought about me since we last hung out, but i guess in that way, despite everything that happened, i'm grateful to him. i know that i'm still not exactly as healed as it may seem because as i write this, my eyes sting and the familiar lump is back, but i also know there's nothing wrong with that. this experience hurt me so deeply, but it taught me so much, especially how to treat myself with more kindness.
yes, i felt humiliated at the time, but it doesn't mean that i was humiliating.
still learning,
nix
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