We were happy. We were young. The love was fresh and it was strong. We thought we were a rocket that could only go up. Unfortunately, we lost sight of the fact that everything that goes up eventually comes back down.

Young love is precious. It is naive. Everything is new. It feels so real. You could turn yourself red swearing so hard that it will last forever. Every experience is a novelty. Every touch is sweet. Every word melts you into goo. Everything else is insignificant. They become the most important thing to you. You center your life around them and they center theirs around you. You are their shadow and they are yours. This could be the only time in your life you fully and completely give yourself emotionally to another being. This is a time before the walls and hardness have grown in your heart. You're unblemished.

They promise you the world. They promise you a future where you will never be apart. They promise you their unconditional love. They promise you their everlasting affection, their complete attention. They promise that they will never leave. They promise that you are everything. They make promises that are not theirs to make.

We are beings of change. Our personalities, opinions, and surroundings are never frozen in time. So, why should we assume our emotions will be unchanging, unwavering?

Things grow. Things change. Things break. People say this makes us stronger, harder. Stronger, harder, and significantly less warm and emotional. With every end, it gets harder to be open to the idea of a beginning. The heart with the double door entrance with streamers that say "Welcome" usually closes with that one first love.

After that first love is gone, you become wary of promises. How could it be? They said you were their everything, and now you are their nothing. How does any of it make sense? How do you get past that? You test out love a couple more times and it seems to just be a cycle of promises that meant the same as wind; powerful, strong, then gone.

It is hard not to grow cold and distant after being so misguided. They did not mean to lie to you, they did not mean to harm you. But in the end, the promises were unfulfilled, and you were left feeling hurt.

Does that mean we should stop loving as strongly as we did the first time? Should we stop putting ourselves in such vulnerable positions? Should we stop believing in love? How do we get over the pain--or at least find a way to ignore it? How do we not feel like every "I love you" that comes in the future isn't a backhanded punch in the gut?

We have to fight the cold. We have to run through the blizzard because once we pass it, we will find ourselves in a meadow radiating sunshine. To do this we have to stay open and warm, and love as hard and as strongly as we did in youthful innocence.