A first love is just as dangerous as anything else you risk trying for the first time. It makes you feel so incredibly good and is a feeling you want to last forever. Then, when it ends, you feel another feeling for the first time, but it’s one you hope you'll never feel again. It’s as if your heart fell out of your butt and you may never find it again. The worst part is knowing even though the person who's caused all this torture, you still want them just as bad as you want the pain to stop.
What makes your first love so poignant are the firsts. Every touch, every laugh, every minute you spend with them feels like nothing you’ve ever felt before. This person makes you want to be a better version of yourself. You learn things about yourself: Like you can hold in a fart way longer than you thought or you actually can watch a movie with subtitles without falling asleep. You learn things about them as well: They hate having their toes cracked or they secretly like "Gossip Girl."
You push each other to try new things, and that makes everything new and exciting. You're floating in this bubble of bliss where this person could do things that would normally make you hate someone but it just makes you love them more. You've never felt this way before and it makes life better.
Eventually this person becomes a part of you and you become a part of them. This is a scientifically proven part of a relationship called integrating. Psychologists have mapped 12 stages of a relationship, six coming together and six coming apart. The six stages of coming together are initiating, experimenting, intesifying, integrating and bonding. The six parts of coming apart are differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding and terminating. Experts identify integrating as the final stage of a relationship. In it, you and your partner begin to actually identify as one whole.
The bubble of bliss is wonderful. This person loves every part of you, even the parts you never thought anyone would love. You may barely be a functioning adult, but it feels like this person will be in your life forever and they'll make everything better forever. Forever sounds perfect.
Until you wake up and the thought of forever terrifies you. You begin to worry about whether your plans will align with theirs. You're so young -- too young. Eventually you will each realize this, though probably not at the same time.
Suddenly the person you thought loved you unconditionally begins to fade away. Everything is no longer a first.
Then they’re gone and you start feeling all new firsts, except these are new and horrible. The first time you realize they're probably looking at someone else the way they use to look at you. The first time you hear their name and it hurts instead of comforts. The first time you go to bed without sending or receiving an "I love you" text. You're trying to pick up the pieces, except some of them are missing and you aren’t going to get them back. It's like one of your arms fell off and now you have to sew shut a hole in your life.
You're empty, you're broken, and you feel like you've been placed in this foreign city without a map and no one can help you. Your friends try to console you. You go out, you get drunk, you cry. In fact, you cry so much you think about moving to California to help out with the drought. Then your friends think you're depressing to be around, and they try to be there for you, but they get tired and people can only watch so many sad rom-coms while watching you cry and eat beef jerky. Your friends can walk away from your sadness, but you can’t. It festers in your gut and hangs around like the worst hangover of your life.
So you talk to anyone who will listen, the checkout girl, a guy at the bus stop, in hopes they have the answer that will make you feel better. You want your pain acknowledged by as many people as possible because it feels like that will somehow justify you feeling so bad for so long. You are hurt so deep you know you will never be the same again. You look in the mirror and you don't even recognize yourself, and you're broken down and miserable but you still want that person. The person who made you feel so good, but somehow caused you the most pain.
Until one day you wake up and you feel different. You feel this new emotion you've never felt before. It's a small feeling, but it starts to grow over time. You think about that person who made you feel that blissful feeling you’ve been missing less often. One day you realize you watched a whole episode of "Gilmore Girls" without crying, and another day you realize you’ve gone a whole day without thinking of them
You start to do things for yourself. You push yourself to try things you've never tried before. You realize you can pick up and move to a new city and not have to worry about anyone else. You can make plans for the future without a forever hanging over your head. You were hurt so deeply, and you have the scars and the fears to prove it, but the scars show you how far you've come. Things you thought you needed that person for you can do on your own.
Eventually, you think of that person you've been trying so hard to forget, and for the first time in a long time, it's not with anger or longing, or even with love. You realize despite your best efforts they are a part of your story and helped make you who you are and you're better because of it. But you’ve also made yourself better. For everything they gave and took from you, eventually you found the strength to move forward by your own strength, and that's something you'll never forget.
