First Love

Growing up, you look forward to your first love. It's something that girls tend to never forget and tend to use as a comparison for future loves, right?  But wait, you say...everyone ends up with their first love?  Wrong!  I went to school with several couples who married and are still together, but there are others who never made it to the alter. They parted ways and have separate lives, separate families.  How can this be?  They were perfect for one another!  Or were they?

For a teenage girl, love is a fairy tale.  Girl meets boy, they fall in love, they say "I Do" and live happily ever after. But what if this doesn't happen?  What if one or the other wakes up from this fairy tale to say, "I want to see other people"?  If the girl is on the receiving end, it's possible that it's the most devastating point in her life. Some recover and some do not. 

First loves are special. First love breakups are horrific.  I still remember mine. I felt as if my heart was ripped out of my chest. I laid down and literally wanted to die. (Teenage drama, right?) I couldn't imagine my life without him.  I was told there would be others, but no teenage girl wants to hear something like that in the middle of the worst memory of their life.  She wants to be told that he will change his mind, wake up and see what he's lost. Girls...that rarely happens. 

So here you are, laying on the bed, eyes puffy and red and fresh tears running down your face as some sappy love song is playing or as Taylor Dayne sings "Love will lead you back". You're singing your heart out as if he will hear it and come running back. This isn't the movies....  Why do we associate so much with music during these key times in our lives?  It never fails that something is playing that describes perfectly how we feel at any moment of the day.  We reach low moments in our lives and fuel that emotion with things that make us feel worse instead of changing gears, accepting what has happened, dealing and moving on. 

Some get stuck and don't know where to go from there, how to move forward.  We have to realize that life isn't perfect, love isn't perfect. Perception has made us think that this was meant to be or that was meant to be, that one day you'll be back with that first love and will be happy. There was a reason it didn't work out the first time so what makes you think it would work out the second time?

Some people come into your life for a short period, maybe to guide you down the path you're meant to go on or make you see something in you that you didn't realize was there. Others are meant to be there for a lifetime, whether a lifetime of love or a lifetime of friendship. As you go through life, some just pop in every now and then to remind you of who you are and your capability to love. 

I lost my first love over 21 years ago. We still talk from time to time and are friends, but I honestly don't see that we were ever meant to be together.  I loved and lost and yet somehow......I survived.