I am 19 years old. I am young, very young, but I have met my one for life. Our story is .. a little different then most. Okay, really different. I will spare you a lot of the details, but before I go into it, I would like to give you a bit of a back story.
When I was 14, I met, dated, and fell inlove with a small town boy who did more then just break my heart. I was left with PTSD from it, if that can give you a little insight about what happen. We dated for, just about a year or so.
When I was 16, I met a man much older then me who in some ways lead me to believe we were soul mates. I guess in some sense we were, but we were never meant to last. We went on and off for 3 years.

After my first boyfriend, I told myself I did not want to be an outsider. I skipped high school parties, I skipped college parties, I skipped bitch beers, I skipped weed. Go big or go home. I went to parties that had thousands of people, I chugged bottles of vodka, I "dated" a new person every week. I did very, very bad things. Some things too inappropriate to talk about here.
After the man I met when I was 16, I decided to slow down. But I didn't. It got worse in some ways, better in others. I stopped doing drugs and I stopped drinking AS much. I started working harder in school, but as soon it was Friday I was gone and not seen again till Sunday night. This went on for a while.

New Years 2015 going into 2016, I got the drunkiest I had ever been, I drunk texted my ex, and spent most of the next day crying and puking. In that moment I realized, wow I really need to get it together.

And I did. I stopped drinking, I stopped everything. I still partied, but only sometimes and it wasn't the big events it used to be. With that being said, one day I was feeling pretty miserable about myself, so I got some of my closest friends together and we went party hopping.

That was March 5th, 2016.

That was the night I met my best friend, my lover, my partner in crime, my boyfriend, my Person.

I did NOT like him at first, like at all. I thought he was a complete and total douchebag. No, seriously. While my friends were outside smoking, he and I sat inside and talked; for four hours kids. My plan was to never see him again even if we had a lovely conversation, he had different ideas. He added himself in my phone without me noticing.

We have now been together for over a year. This has, by far, been one of the hardest years of my entire life.
It's also one of the most loving, wonderful, adventurous, years ever. I have never learned so much about myself until now.
Being young and inlove in NOT easy, every one except our close friends were totally against us being together. Everyone kept saying that we were way to young to be together. Being young has some messed up values to it, such as being very inexperienced. Remember the PSTD I talked about? Yea that causes so many issues between us and it's really all my fault. We have gone through our fair share of bad crap, we had a good few months at one point where we both had to really think, "do we really want to keep doing this?"
He was brought up differently and therefore we had many issues with his lying.
I had a few issues that I am still learning to cope with and wrongly take out on him.
Many times in our relationship we were unsure where we would be sleeping that night and there were times were we spilt a soda for dinner.

What keeps us going? What makes it different? What has made this relationship vastly different then all the others I have been in? What do we do that most others don't?

Because we are stubborn assholes thats why.
Seriously.
We don't want to give up on each other, it doesn't matter how hard it gets, it doesn't matter what happens, we always figure it out, we always work through it. We are both very mature for our age. Therefore, we understand that in a relationship "love" isn't what keeps everything together. Sure, love is glue. But you can't always glue something once and expect to stay like that forever. You gotta keep adding more glue.
Relationships are work. Period. If you want it to work out, make it work out. You also must understand that different people express love differently. It took lots of time, effort, tears, and work. But we figured it out. We also talked, a lot. We didn't argue, judge, scream, yell, call each other names, belittle each other. When we had a problem, we talked about it. We fixed it. Or we understood it. We also compromised a lot. Example, I hate when he plays video games to much, well he plays video games sometimes when he is depressed. So rather then fight about it, I told him how I felt, he explained why he did it. I learned to let him play games and he learned the time and place to play them.

Young love is a unique love. It, in some ways, is so so so much harder. We are still figuring ourselves out. We are still selfish, we are still learning and growing. The important part is we are willing to do it all together, we know that over time we will change, we will grow, but we know we will do it together. We get to build an empire together. Together. Which personally I say is the best part. How cool is it that I don't get to figure out life by myself? I have a partner to help me out when things get hard or confusing.

It not all perfect, and it's not all bad.

Never, and I really mean never, did I think I would have this kind of love. I didn't think I deserved it, let alone getting it when I was 18. This love is so pure so beautiful, so elegant, so strong, so fearless. Sometimes people met their ones young, sometimes they meet them a little older. Whenever it is, life, the universe, won't give them to you at the wrong time, you'll met them right when you need them. That part is true, but I definitely didn't think he was the one when I met him, but then again I was mainly blinded by my naiveness to wanting to stay single and the blind love I had for someone who never did me right. If I had met Alex at any time other then when I did, we would had absolutely never made it. Personally, if we had met any later we probably would have not made it still. He has changed me for the good, I quit so many things and done so many things for him and I have learned so much because of him. I am a better person because of him and vise versa.

Oh, and if that doesn't tell you that we are meant to be, how about the fact he and I have been to the same events, parties, celebrations, concerts, places, at the exact same time and never so much as saw each other or got any where close enough to touch. He went to the Jr. High I almost went to but didn't end up at last minute. We had several mutual friends and we had friends that were friends. Never. Ever. Met. Never saw each other, never knew of each others existence until 2016.
Oh, I take that back, when I was 13 he Facebook messaged me over a Facebook argument I had with a friend of his.
I didn't reply.

I love this man and one day we will have a big wedding in front of everyone that believed in us and cheered us on. One day he will walk down the red carpet with me, one day we will have our big house and lots of children, all of animals and our big garden.
One day our lives will be perfect, until then we work hard to build each other up, and our lives. One day we will have our Empire. For now though, I get to sleep next to the love of my life every night until I die. And I'm only 19. Now THAT'S something special.