It feels like the impossible. Trying to fall in love a second time, after a first love, after realizing it is in fact within your emotional capacity to intensely love again, but it's twofold. Step one is all about your first love. Minor detail. Nothing big. Small hurdle towards something of relatively greater magnitude.
The first person you ever love, and I'm talking romantic love (not that it's any less or more than other loves but for the sake of saving you from a dissertation on the equality of all types let's keep it to romantic), will obviously change your life in the approach and subsequent process to falling, if ever, for someone else. And not to diminish all the couples who managed to commit and stay committed to their first loves, it's remarkable and, hell, hat's off to you for beating the odds, but...
Falling in love a first time usually consumes you. It's new and everything the books and movies and tv shows say it's going to be. There's fireworks, butterflies, racing hearts, obsession, feeling like you're both swimming the vast and relatively infinite ocean of possibilities of a life together and you never want to come up for air. Suddenly, you're drowning. Emotions run high, distance or work or just life gets in the way while you're both figuring out the "us" part of you at the same time, everything's too new all at once.
It implodes.
Getting over a first love usually involves copious amounts of sulking or anger or meaningless sex. Drinking yourself stupid or eating everything in your house, trying to fill the void. Sitting in your room and crying to all the love songs you've listened to your whole life and wondering how they all finally make too much sense. Or all of the above.
Drinking yourself stupid: 0/10 would not recommend at weddings
It's been said before, but time really is the answer.
You check up on the them with mutual friends, try not to invade on their privacy. You go on dates and all you can do is compare. None of it feels the same, and you know that right from the beginning, every time. You're reaching for butterflies and fireworks that just aren't there and it all feels forced, so you stop. You start living without the express intent of finding your complement. It might take months, it might take years. It used to boggle your mind that there was this stranger out there who knew all your thoughts and secrets, your dreams and fears, but you slowly start forgetting the details. You stop remembering their voice. Then, your whole relationship feels more like one big picture, a Monet of sorts with blurred impressionistic brushstrokes that, from far away seems whole, but close up has little cohesion.
One day, you might see them across the street or sitting at the same restaurant. Maybe they pop up on your newsfeed or a friend casually mentions them. And it won't do anything to you at all. And you find that you've laid your first love to rest already. You've buried it and marked the grave and, sure, you'll leave flowers on the tombstone whenever you think of them, but your first love's just not alive for you anymore and you make your peace.
Where your first love probably swept you off your feet, your second love will move the earth under you. There's something about the second time, like you recognize the feeling, know this one's different too all over again — yet in an entirely new way, because the second time you fall in love will be nothing like your first.
But that's step two. And that's next week.
