Love is what you meant to me and you meant everything. Love is having that special someone that gives you the can’t eat, can’t sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, world series kind of feeling! Falling in love is the best and worst thing of your entire life.

I was myself when I was with you and you made each and every day so incredibly special. All of the small gestures, from delivering coffee on my car at school to taking care of me when I was sick, spoke volumes about how much you cared.

You were the first person I ever loved and you will always hold a special place in my heart for being my first love. You taught me what love was and how to be loved. You brought out the best of me and always made me happy, even when I was having the worst days of my life. Being able to open up to someone about everything really helped me. Listening was one of your best qualities, from listening to stupid roommate drama to things that I had never told anyone else, including myself.

Although college separated us I always felt like you were right by my side although you were hundreds of miles away. I couldn’t imagine my life without you.

We started dating after Junior Prom, how stereotypical of us. We both fell so hard and so fast, it was like being hit by a train. Everyday was a fairytale with you including the first time you said “I love you”. It was July 4th on the Esplanade in Boston, under the fireworks right as it started to down pour rain. You said to me, “You know I don’t even like you,” as you pulled me in even closer and said, “I love you”. It was straight out of a movie as we kissed in the rain under the fireworks.

It was the summer that I fell so hard in love with you that I will compare each and every other boy to the rest of my life and that is just so unfair. Senior year of high school approached and as the impending doom of college crept up upon us and couples were starting to break up, we decided to stay together because why end something so amazing. We knew we were going to be together forever and frequently planned our wedding, kids’ names, and our future life together with our house in our hometown with a white picket fence.

Saying goodbye, the day you left for school felt like my heart had been ripped right out of my chest. I was losing my best friend and he was moving hundreds of miles away from where I was heading to school in a week.

Every day I missed you more and more until the day you surprised me at Thanksgiving when I didn’t think I would see you until Christmas break. We spent every waking moment at home together for almost two more years until one day it all came to a grinding halt.

I was so excited to finally be home at the same time for longer than a weekend during the school year. It was Easter break and you picked me up from the airport. In rush hour traffic on the way home you decided to breakup with me during the most stressful times of my life when I was already falling apart.

I was completely blindsided, once again being hit by a train. It is ironic how during his worst time I was supportive and stuck it out, but during mine it became almost like the term I had just learned, “Fight or Flight”. After dating for three years there was no conversation just this is the way it is, you took off like a bird without any hesitations or without even looking back.

My world came crumbling down on that day and you went from my best friend to a stranger. I asked myself how does the person that made you feel like a princess and the happiest in the whole world to making you the most miserable and worthless person in the whole world? You had given me everything and now was taking it all away.

Over the years my happiness had become dependent on you and with your absence I was not happy at all. I had to work on myself and do it on my own. I had to learn to love myself again and find my own self-worth without a boy. I had to convince myself it was going to be okay and everything happens for a reason. Searching for that reason of being heart broken is “waiting for rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing." (Sam- A Cinderella Story). But as we saw in the Cinderella Story it does happen eventually.

To love yourself again I had to let it go and forgive. I had to understand that this helped me grow as a person and only made me stronger by going through life without being dependent on someone. I know I need more than someone that could leave on a moments notice and never look back. I know that I want the boy that gives me everything, for forever, instead of the boy that gave me everything, then took it all away.