Dear My Man’s First Girlfriend,
You may not know me, but I have heard about you. I am your ex-boyfriend’s second girlfriend. I do not know why, but for some reason, I am always someone’s second girlfriend. It is all I have ever known and experienced.
You know how there is that rhyme that goes like: First is worst, second is best, third is the one with a hairy chest? Well…it is so not true that second is the best. I have to constantly be compared to you. Being second can be like being chopped liver; I am the scraps, the sloppy seconds. While you received all of the glory and made your first mark, I came in and did the dirty work.
I have been thrown out like trash after two weeks because of your return, I have been kept secrets about you from him, and I have been reminded of you in all of my conversations with him. I want it to just be him and me, but there is always the lingering shadow of you cast between us. A sliver of darkness despite my light. A whisper that is unspoken yet heard.
You are in my way. He cannot let go of you. I have to live up to his expectations; I have to live up to you. I am the follower, the runner-up, the next-best-thing. I may as well be the worst if I am not needed the most.
In my eyes, he is number one: the one and only, even if he is number three. To him, I am number two. Number two forever. Everyone knows what number two means, in terms of the bathroom, and that is what I feel like.
Even when I have been truly in love, I have been a disappointment. I have been told that he is not as excited to be with me because he did not have first-love-feelings with me, for I was his second love. I have been pressured to be as good as you. I have given up my first kiss, only to have him crawl back to you at the snap of your fingers.
I treat each love like it is my first and my last, but I do not receive the same in return. I get treated in exactly the way that I am: the second love. I have had countless thoughts, worrying if my man still has feelings for you and wondering what you are like as a person. I have had to imagine what you look like because I was never shown a picture of you, and I have had to close your image out of my mind when he showed me a beautiful picture of you.
As number two, I get to change his perspective of relationships because I am not like you. I get to show him what it is like to date Kenzie Roberts, and I can tell that it is nothing that he has ever experienced before. I, specifically teach him that relationships require hard-work and commitment, due to my neediness and demand for quality time.
I will live for the day when I find someone who treats me like I am his first, last, and everything in between, and I hope you aspire to find that, too. The first will always be remembered as his first true love, the second gets forgotten—deuces—yet teaches him how to be a good boyfriend, and the third gets the prize of a well-taught man. So maybe we both lose…but even if we no longer have a chance to be someone’s first, we could become someone’s last.
Sincerely,
Kenzie Roberts (#2)
