At seventeen, I fell in love with a tall guy with wonderful hair, beautiful eyes, and a blinding smile. Let me spare you details and say, in short, that I was quickly head-over-heels. In fact, it didn't take long before he meant absolutely everything to me. How young and foolish.

What we had initially was the stuff of dreams. He supported me in everything I aspired to do and everything I did, from becoming a professional writer to changing my college major three times. No matter what I did or what mistakes I made in life, he was there, smiling reassuringly, telling me it would all work out in the end.

I believed him.

Having so much faith in him began to be a curse rather than a blessing, and seven months later, he decided to leave. I was young. I thought it was my fault. It had to be. He, of course, had done everything right.

He was perfect, so it had to be me.

Heartbroken and dejected, I went on. I fell in love again, harder and faster than before, and that time everything felt perfectly right.

Until it wasn't.

So, who better to swoop in than my first love? He was with me during what I thought was, truly, my darkest moment. I was broken, and I needed my best friend. I needed my first love.

They say that love comes to you when you aren't looking for it. That was true with us, surely, because I wasn't looking for it when feelings resurfaced again. It seemed like years hadn't passed, like we were still just as young and naive as we were when we fell the first time. We joked like we used to. We were wiser than before, knowing what we wanted, and a second try was as easy to agree to as breathing.

I was more than ready to love him again.

And I did. Fearlessly, I jumped headfirst.

He wasn't there to catch me.

We were meant to end the way we did all those years ago, tumultuously and messily, without closure. We were never meant to be together the way I thought. We just don't know enough yet.

We don't know how to love ourselves, let alone how to love each other.

We have so much to learn about who we are as people, and far too much to learn about how to love.

I gave it a second try years later. I jumped.

If you jump, make sure he's there to catch you.

Our ending, the first one, was meant to be.