Hear me out.

Going away to college was a totally new concept, as I had spent two years at a junior college close to home. Hence, why and how I got involved with the hometown boy, as messy as it ended up being.

Still, even after leaving, packing my things up in boxes and moving them to a very small dorm in a very small town, I couldn't shake this boy.

To this day I can't place what it was about him that made him impossible to get over. Despite that, I seriously just couldn't get over him. No matter how hard I tried. He was perfect to me and for me (or so I thought) and I'd be damned if I couldn't have him back someday.

Until then, I tried to find him in other boys around campus. The dating pool was small, but I picked through, searching for someone that was even slightly close in personality or in looks, or even just having the same blue eyes.

It was November of that year before I realized I had spent so much time looking for the boy I couldn't get over that I missed countless opportunities with others.

"He totally likes you!" my friends would say about a boy we ate lunch near every day.

"He was flirting!" they'd said about this boy and that.

Yet, I was too caught up in finding the boy who left me, trying to replicate that feeling or that person, to even notice the people who truly cared. It was like I had blinders on, refusing to see what was directly in front of me.

Once I let that go and stopped searching, I felt like I was free. I was able to focus on myself for the first time in a long time.

The truth in all of it was that I never wanted to find him again. I wanted to find how he made me feel.

It was only after I stopped my search that I finally did.

I regret wasting so much valuable time trying to do the impossible, but it was a necessary lesson: A boy who leaves certainly isn't worth searching for again.