My first love is a tricky one to write about. Do I talk about the time I was head over heels about a guy who didn’t love me back and who I never really had a relationship with? Do I talk about a relationship that could have been love but something was missing, there were subtle incompatibilities that kept the love from flowing. Or do I write about the guy who I first said I love you to and meant it, my first adult relationship where our families met and my thoughts were consumed by him. I think I’ll pick this one.
I don’t know when I first realised I was in love with him. I think it might have been that first time we ran into the sea together the moment we arrived in South Africa. He always brought fun to the relationship and I loved that this is how we started our trip together. I remember the first time my heart melted, it was right at the start when I took him to a ceilidh and in one of the dances you had to dance in the middle of the circle and he seemed sweet and embarrassed with a huge grin on his face, emanating unadulterated joy. He has the best smile, big and goofy. But I also remember that by the time I told him I loved him, and of-course I said it first because he was always more withdrawn and avoidant of commitment, it had been building up for too long and was said more out of societal expectations than anything he’d done. After that, however, my love for him was reconfirmed over and over again, it seemed to flow better after we’d said it. There were the times we spent cuddling in his bed laughing over everything and anything, pulling faces on the hammock, snuggling by the record player, or when he comforted me with music and a massage when I had FND, that moment was so warm and loving. It was him alone who could absorb my attention enough to take me away from all my health problems.
However, my first love also disappointed me. I came to realise what it feels like to dream up expectations in your head and then watch them come crumbling down. There was the time he spent in quarantine hotel and I dreamed he may surprise me by coming straight over at midnight when he got ‘released’. Instead I saw him the next afternoon, after he’d had time with his flatmates, and he acted awkward and aloof. Or the love notes I so desperately wanted and needed to read during the second trip to South Africa that never came. I think he’d checked out by that time.
There’s a song I’m addicted to at the moment, ironically called addicted by Jorja Smith. The main message of the song is the other person should be addicted to you like you are to them. Sam and I never had that. I always felt I loved him more than he loved me. And it also wasn’t a secure love. In the back of my mind was the fact we could and probably would break up.
So I’m not going to say something cheesy like my first love taught me how to love because he didn’t. I could do that just fine myself and it wasn’t a love to model others on. But he did give me more confidence in myself. And I got over my own commitment problems as I didn’t want to be like him. I feel lucky my heart wasn’t broken by him- I never gave it to him to break in the first place. I was also going through depression when he broke up with me so I had other worries and issues to deal with. My only regret per se is that we ended when I still wasn’t my healthy, full self so I didn’t get the chance to show him what he was missing. I wrote a letter to him as one of my first blog posts (didn’t actually send it to him but just to get my thoughts out), I made a killer playlist and I wrote a list of things I didn’t like about him. These all truly helped me move on. I’ve forgotten most of our in-jokes by now and shared hilarities.
We did hook up after the breakup but it was our last week together as he’d come up to visit me in Scotland so it did feel a bit different but the sex was fairly empty and almost felt rehearsed. If I ever get the desire to sleep with him again I’m going to remember this amazing quote from Anne Carson:
‘When I found myself
Thrusting my little burning red backside like a baboon
at a man who no longer cherished me’
It’s such a perfect quote to demonstrate that sex becomes so animalistic without the affection and love, and not in a good way.
I guess I do feel a bit jealous imagining him with another girl. Not so much for the time she’ll spend with him but for the lovely family she’ll be introduced to, the holidays to South Africa, and the lifestyle. But the insecurity in our love just wasn’t worth it.
So in conclusion I feel happy that he was my first love but even happier I can build on that and aim for a a more committed and secure love full of adventures and life.
