I've had plenty of different realizations over the course of my life. When I realized I was attracted to women. When I realized I wasn't sexually attracted to men. When I realized I was a liberal. When I realized how different some of my views are from my parents. Any time when I realized I needed actual help. But there was one realization that I refused to acknowledge.

Beginning of my freshman year of college, I started dating one of my friends. His name was James*. He wasn't the guy I usually went for. He wore beanies, skateboarded, and listened to pop punk and metal and all sorts of music I hated. We used to joke that, on paper, we shouldn't be friends, let alone date. We were extremely different. He went to Lesley and I went to Emerson. We weren't extremely long distance; managing to see each other once a week.

I love astrology and, as a double Scorpio with Cancer rising, I feel and feel deeply. Only a few months into the relationship, I felt something was different about this relationship than my past ones. So, on my birthday, I told James I loved him. He didn't say it back at first, which scared me. No matter how much my therapist tells me "the only rejection is self rejection," I was terrified of being rejected for my moment of vulnerability. He said it back to me later that night. I remember he smiled and told me of course he loved me back; and I was at ease.

Our relationship wasn't confined to exclusively happy times; towards the end we began to fight more often. I was passive aggressive and it bothered him so he would ignore me, which made me more upset. It was a horrible cycle with no winners. And eventually, as many people have done before us, we broke up (four days before Valentine's Day, I might add).

Out of embarrassment for having been rejected, I tried to pretend I didn't have feelings. I associated the idea of my real feelings for him with thoughts of shame and embarrassment. I made myself believe James had meant nothing to me and he was just another "shameful ex boyfriend" as I seemed to have plenty.

These thoughts really harmed my process of healing. I found myself not understanding why I couldn't move on as fast as he had and why I was still so upset and strangely attached to him. I assumed the problem was that I was "bad at moving on" since I had always been the dumper. In reality, I truly was the problem because I prevent myself from moving on. I stood in my own way because I was too scared to confess my real feelings to myself. I loved him. James was my first love and I didn't want it to be true.

I remember the day I found he moved on like it was yesterday. It felt like we were breaking up all over again combined with being stabbed in the gut. I cried for about an hour on the phone to my friend, Olivia* about how angry I was that it upset me. Yes I was upset he moved on "first" and yes I was upset it was with the girl he told me "not to worry about" but I was mostly upset because it hurt me. I wanted to be an impenetrable wall of no feeling. I wanted to stop caring about him and whatever he was doing. I wanted to feel like I had the power and I was the one who was doing significantly better. But at that point in time, I wasn't. I have always been the person who wants to "win" the breakup. The person who is doing so much better without the other, it's like their presence never even affected them. I was obsessed with comparing my life to his and seeing who was doing better.

In many ways, I really thrived after we broke up. I finally made friends at my school, I became eligible to join SAG-AFTRA, I joined a sorority, got an apartment, among other things. But the one thing that held me back from thinking I had "won" was that he was in a relationship.

I turned, what was probably still feelings for him, into a weird obsession with knowing what was going wrong in his life. My best friend, who was still friends with James, assured me he didn't have any ill will towards me; he just needed some space from me and our intense relationship. It made me feel worse because I had this insatiable need to be better than him in every aspect of my life. I even occasionally felt a sickening sense of joy when I learned something minorly bad happened to him. I understood what I was feeling was toxic, but I couldn't understand why I felt it. Looking back it was because I wasn't letting myself mourn any longer than I already had.

I realized, no matter what I thought, there are no ways to "win" the breakup; because nobody wins and nobody loses. All of those things I accomplished after the breakup are things I easily could have done in a relationship. They just so happened to be after we had broken up.

I finally had to admit to myself that James had been my first love. It's not as shameful as I had convinced myself it would be. Part of me felt like if I admitted he was my first love, that I would have to deal with the crushing reality that someone I really, truly cared about rejected me. But that's not true. Sure, I was embarrassed at first (and still kind of am) to admit that I loved a skater boy, but what does it matter? He was honestly a super nice, genuine guy and I'm glad I loved someone who is so kind. Once I admitted it, I stopped caring about being better than him. I used to torture myself with thoughts of what it would be like to just run into him, but now I know that my world won't fall apart. I'm in such a happier place than I was, and I hope he's doing well. What I learned is that it's vitally important to really assess how you feel about something. There are some truths we don't want to admit, but in the end it's better if we do.

* Indicates a name has been changed