if someone had told me a year ago that i would find a boy i was attracted to, fall in love, get my heart broken, be heartbroken, move away from my entire life, and struggle to be independent, i would have laughed in their faces.
i’d like to think i have a healthy perception of love and everyone here has told me that it’s because my view is so healthy and fair to what love should be, that i struggle now to let go of first love. i don’t think much has changed, i still think fondly of him, i still think of him (my friend’s are sick of it, they feel like they know you without ever having to meet you), i still miss what we had, i still miss being cared about, and i get reminded of him at the smallest things (why were you so partial to those uniqlo shirts, especially your off-purple that i can no longer look at for too long).
on one hand i think i can be a bit angry, but more i think i’m simply sad for myself. i should be angry, how could he not pick up the signs, how could he not think this was love, how could he spend so much time and effort on me and not love me in some way, how could he ruin me so gently? but at the same time, i can’t pinpoint an actual fault because i feel equally guilty in failing to adequately communicate, allowing myself to be weak, allowing myself to selfishly indulge even when i had suspicions that i was in too deep. i tell myself over and over that it’s cause i have such an addictive personality, i loved him like the smoke i love, something to sooth, something to fall back to but i really don’t think that was the case. i loved him because he fulfilled me and made me better, because he fit the baseline i had imagined in a long term partner, and if he ever asked, i think i would take him back and give him my time, for a very long time. people act like its easy to get over things, they expect me to be able to, especially considering we had never been a properly labeled relationship, but to me, i feel like the person I am will never return to the girl i was before this summer. and i do miss her, i miss her like a kid misses a missed birthday party, but i also think i am better, because he did make me better.
love is vulnerable and weak, but love truly improves you and motivates you, and most importantly: love is the small things. i hope he can look back on us and remember me kindly, whether or not he can accept that it is love (at least my definition of it), and if not, that he can apply his level of care in our friendship to his future relationships.
love is warping, i think its impossible to be in love with someone without it disrupting your identity at a fundamental level. it will forever alter the way you think, and if you find someone truly deserving of your love, it should alter you for the better.
i think the most important thing about love is that you love them for their personality and their impact and their worldview and their physical presence, but that you fall in love with them because of how it manifests into mundane tasks. falling in love is being neutralized and not being able to get angry at other things when i was around him, falling in love is seeing his willingness to do small things to make my life easier or even to offer that, falling in love is the way he responds to my mental health issues and past experiences, falling in love is seeing the care he puts into following up with every interaction he had with someone that matters to me, and falling in love is seeing anything he does as endearing and a moment to cherish (eye contact while singing throwback bangers in the car, seeing him get excited over small things, being able to talk about hobbies and live-discuss comp league). and once you’ve fallen truly and well, i believe it's hard and should be hard to remove them from their spot as your favourite person. you never want to have to re-rearrange your life to no longer include the person you spend your day updating, texting, gaming, calling, even willing to sit in facetime to watch him build an ikea shelf. i believe that everybody should know the moment they fall in love, because that's when you’ll realize that you are growing and that you want to share that growth and motivate your partner to progress alongside you.
i think there’s a distinctive difference between looking for a relationship and looking for a partner, and i think being in love leads you to the latter. maybe that’s because i’m an optimistic hopeless romantic, but i think the naivety that exists when you look at having a long-term future is what distinguishes mature love. as paradoxical as it sounds: mature love is willingness to make irrational decisions and sacrifices and see the best in the person and want the best for them despite your logistical side maybe noticing some potential risks in it.
take it from me, i thought we were doomed to begin with. the moment we met and found out where we were going, i should have known that nothing good would happen. but that didn’t stop me from selfishly wanting to keep him in any way i could for as long as it could happen. it didn’t stop him from half-jokingly (but i believe truly) trying to get me to reconsider, building on my doubts, and trying to at least open a potential for us to end up at Western together. why didn’t either of us stop each other? cause i think no matter what his feelings were, he could recognize we clicked and he also wanted my presence to last till distance did us apart. but at some point as i fell so in love, different aspects and the thought of LDR stopped mattering. transferring back became an option (i mean i’d be successful eventually anyways, just off pure confidence in myself), having a long-distance relationship didn’t matter to me as much since i didn’t care much for physicality anyways, and i was willing to do all that to have a chance to prolong my happiness and my time with him. that’s irrational, and i’m glad i didn’t do it, but i am also cognizant that that’s the correct line of thought once you find the person you would do that for.
so, how do you let love go? well honestly, i don’t know at all. just like falling in love is the small things, heartbreak is equally those reminders. it’s seeing a concert and thinking he would enjoy it, not being able to listen to i love you so anymore because it was my last gift to him, seeing tsm news and thinking of sending it to him, watching worlds and missing the person i used to talk to, being sad and thinking to myself that he would still pick up if i called because he’d know that i probably just really need some support and understanding at the moment, and just various small signifiers. the shift from dependence and being able to consult someone on microdecisions and have a person to “return to” is something i miss, i crave the emotional attachment even though i know i need to learn to live and exist independently of that.
i highly doubt i’ll be emotionally available for a while, which sucks because i felt like i met him right when i had finally developed that capability for the first time, just to lose it in the same half a year. because even now, i hope we have a second chance at romance because as it stands, i believe that he fit every check box for me. i hope he realizes that telling me about his dreams (#youbelongwithme by taylor swift), showing me music and making playlists together, calling until either one of us has to leave, being able to just spend time talking about whatever, updates on our days even while on vacation and his dog walks, and aiming to do extracurriculars so we could both make advancements for our future, was probably much too far over platonic. it hurt the most to hear that he not only didn’t have feelings for me, but that he didn’t know how he led me on, when he knew very well i wasn’t like this with other people. and even to this day, i believe theres no way he could have been feelingless the entire duration.
so is it healthy to still miss him and to alter between a state of i miss him and i miss home a month and a half into university? probably not, but also i hope he misses me sometimes (& thinks of me kindly and us fondly) too. i think cutting myself off, as much as it hurts and changes my routine, is the best thing i could have done out of respect for both of us and the potential for us to have future relationships. being in love with someone also means constantly wanting the best for them, and taking myself out of his life is a selfish decision but allows us time to step back and develop those boundaries. i don’t know when i’ll be truly over it, i’m scared i will compare everyone after to him because he is my first love and i still don’t see a fault in his person. but, he taught me to look at things more in the moment, and based off that, i'll just take it as it is. i’ll know when i fall in love again and i’ll be able to apply my learning points from this first relationship (i call him my ex because that’s the closest label to the honesty of what i experienced) to my next.
i’m thankful i got to live out a good summer before university. i’m thankful for him, for my friends for seeing me through the present and past of the relationship, and i’m thankful i fell in love with my boy.
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