growing up i knew exactly what i wanted; to not be in so many different relationships as most of those surrounding me seemed to be doing. we were young and i didn't see the point of having a boyfriend in middle school and even the beginning of high school. i wanted to wait because i knew the longer i waited, the closer i would be to finding the boy i would marry. most people are afraid of only being in one relationship but i've always been afraid to be in more than one. with that, waiting was more than easy even though i started becoming really jealous of people in relationships come my sophomore year.
i always had "crushes", i put that in quotations because i never actually talked to these people, and i now consider it "just thinking they were cute". i met my current boyfriend my freshman year at a mutual friend's house. very soon, he became one of my "crushes". i met him for two maybe three hours tops, thought about him for a few days and never imagined myself seeing him again.
over a year later, i saw that same face sitting right across from me in Sunday school. i could not believe my eyes; i didn't think we'd ever meet again and all of sudden, he became one of my "crushes" again, except we actually started talking. but this time i had to hide those feelings as he was already in a relationship. after this, months and months flew by and i found myself having other "crushes"- kind of forgetting about my feelings for him because i thought "it will never happen".
that november, only two days after he broke up with his ex-girlfriend, i was driving us and two other friends home. we dropped one off and he hopped in the front. that's when everything happened. our pinkies touched, intertwined, what have you and a rush of butterflies went through my entire body. i cannot believe this is happening, i thought to myself. and after i dropped him off, that's all i thought about. i even drove back to his house after dropping our other friend off. i didn't know what to do or how to feel. he just got out of a relationship and i figured i was just there to comfort him.
we started talking everyday after that, after i made him reassure to me many times that he actually liked me and this wasn't just a rebound for him. we both started having more and more feelings for each other but had to keep it hidden so that we didn't seem like bad people or hurt anyone since it was so soon after his previous girlfriend. about a month and a half later, we started dating.
because of how i grew up, i knew what was real, i was always using common sense when it came to things like this. meaning that i'm not one for "puppy love"; which is something we never went through. i just knew that i needed to care about this boy, before we even started dating. something was always telling me since the day we met that there was something different about him. from that first day, i always felt undeniably comfortable with him and shortly after we began dating, i realized just how much i was starting to really love him. and still, after a year and eight months, he always gives me another reason to love him more and more every single day.
i've learned a lot, with this being my first relationship-- you realize that they are nothing like the movies or what you read in books; it is not perfect and it is not always butterflies and rainbows. but at the end of the day, it is the unconditional love you are always willing to give each other no matter what life throws at you. i may never marry him, but i will forever treasure the love and memories we are making now.
love endlessly, love completely, love blissfully. and never let anyone tell you you're too young or it's too soon because when you love someone, you know.
