First Loves and First Breakups

This post was published on April 25, 2017 on my old blog, samplesizedwriting.wordpress.com

Remember how I mentioned that I'd try to overcome my fear of transparency and write about more personal things last week? Well, today is the day, folks. Ah, first loves. What beautiful, terrible things they are. Now, this post has been in the back of my mind practically since I started my blog but I was a.) scared to open up so publicly and b.) not really driven to write about it until today. So why is today the day? A very simple (and probably very stupid) reason: I walked into a bathroom on my dorm floor and the smell of the cologne my first love would wear hit me like a truck.

"Wow, the smell of his cologne, what a dumb thing to trigger a blog post," you say. "Tons of people probably use the same cologne he does," you say. I would agree with both of those statements. But here's the thing: I have remarkably never smelled that smell around campus before. The cologne is probably from American Eagle or some equally basic store that everybody between the ages of 16-22 shops at, but the last time I smelled it was 6 months ago and 204 miles away from here (that's an exact number, by the way). I was genuinely shocked to suddenly smell it here, on my dormitory floor. The smell brought back a lot of memories, shockingly enough, and thus this blog post has finally come to fruition.

So here's the deal: everyone has a first love (or will have one, if you haven't yet). And this kid, let's call him "James" for anyone who may read this and doesn't know who I'm actually talking about, was unequivocally mine. He was a year younger, and I barely knew the kid until we went on a trip to Germany together. He was my hero on the plane ride there by trading spots with a kid that was supposed to sit next to me that "James" knew I couldn't stand, and we spent the hours chatting, watching movies, and playing cards. There, he tormented me endlessly by taking candid (and terrible) photos of me (along with some equally beautiful pictures of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). We spent days exploring new places, and we spent some nights getting to know each other. We played card games, talked, shared our tastes in music, movies, the basics. We made memories together and came back from the trip way better friends than we were when we left.

In the beginning of my senior year, our friendship continued and we ended up being cast in the same play. The cast was small, and we grew pretty close over the three months leading up to the show. He was a lead, I was a supporting actress, and yet we spent more time together than we did with anybody else. We'd do things as a cast, but "James" would always offer to drive me everywhere we went, even to rehearsals, even though the high school was merely a block from my house. People around us started seeing something before I did. I was completely oblivious of his feelings about me (and mine about him, to be honest), but my friends would insist he liked me, the cast would giggle and give knowing looks at rehearsals, and the director would tease and tell us to stop flirting between scenes. Eventually we realized and acknowledged that we both very much liked each other and "James" asked me out on the weekend of the show. A few dates later, we were a couple.

We spent the holiday season together, our birthdays together, we got to know each other's families (I even attended his big family Christmas party that year), and we spent an incredible amount of time together. You know how it's often said that first loves are a bit obsessive? Well, that's 100% true. We'd text and Snapchat constantly, we'd see each other at least three times a week outside of school, and we'd often FaceTime on the nights we didn't.

During the first few months of the relationship, I was so happy, and a few months in, I also kind of discovered what love was like. I had dated boys before, and of course I had crushes before, too, but they were not at all the same. I cared deeply for "James," and while love is very difficult to put into words, I know I felt it for him.

Things started getting difficult the closer we got to my high school graduation date. We started having fights, some of which were a bit frightening, and a lot of which were over things that weren't worth arguing about. (It's also worth noting that a lot of those fights were not instigated by me. I truly, deeply hate confrontation.) Through this I learned "James" was stubborn, hurtful, easily jealous (and usually unnecessarily so), and liked to place blame on anybody but himself. Perhaps the best word for his actions was 'immature.' And yet, I still loved him. I thought it was normal for couples to have arguments, and I felt that through everything, he loved me, too. And I hope he did, really.

We made it through my senior year, and "James" was there through my last high school musical, my last high school stage performance, my prom, and my graduation. He was simultaneously my supporter and my antagonizer. Through the summer, I felt our relationship getting more tense, which I attributed to my college departure date drawing nearer. We had more stupid fights, more of which were a bit frightening, and yet I still loved him. My last summer before college was difficult, because leaving home for the first time and leaving all your friends and family behind is difficult. It was made more difficult when my father had a longer-than-comfortable stint in the hospital in the weeks before I was meant to leave for college. "James" was there supporting me through all of it, even though we were having more and more problems.

I went to college, and I very desperately didn't want my relationship with "James" to be another example of the "high school relationships don't last 'til Thanksgiving of your first semester" statement. The first few weeks of me being here at SU were very difficult for us, but then suddenly they weren't. I thought it was because "James" had adjusted to me being away and our relationship having to be long distance for the time being, but I later learned it was because he had settled on breaking up with me, (more than) most likely to start dating his former ex-girlfriend in my place. I came home for his senior homecoming weekend, thinking that we'd at least get to spend some time together, but instead he broke up with me on a walk around my neighborhood. In my high school parking lot, to be specific. As if he just needed to dig the knife in deeper, he stated that even though we just broke up, he would be attending the homecoming dance that evening because a "friend" wanted him to, and through that statement it felt as if he didn't care about us, or me, at all.  I walked home as fast as I could, him unfortunately trailing in my wake because his car was parked in front of my house, and I practically fell into my living room, sobbing.

I had truly, honestly, never felt as terribly as I did that day. It felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest, the air ripped from my lungs, and I don't think I had ever cried that hard in all my life. When I managed to tell my mother between sobs what had happened, she said "Oh boy, this is the first big one." She was right. I'm pretty sure I cried for an hour and a half straight (and on and off throughout the week after the breakup). I went through half a box of tissues that day. "James" was my first love and my first real heartbreak and in that moment I thought that I never ever wanted to feel that way again. In that moment, I hated the boy I had been in love with for almost a year of my life. When I got back to Syracuse the next day, I felt even worse, because I had tons of pictures of me and "James" together in my dorm, and I had tons of little gifts and stuffed animals he had gotten for me just laying around. I had to give some objects to my parents to take all the way back home, and the rest I threw in a drawer that I still haven't really opened since October.

My heart healed, over time. "James" ripped it open a few more times since October, especially after I realized he had 1) started dating his ex-girlfriend,  2) probably started dating her in secret very shortly after we had broken up, and 3) probably started having feelings for her before we had even broken up. Now, we've unfriended/unfollowed each other on all social media platforms, and the last time I saw him in person was in March for a very brief minute when I congratulated him for his role in his senior musical. The meeting was not a warm one.

I still miss him. A part of me probably always will. I don't really miss our romantic relationship anymore as months down the road I realize that it was probably (some friends would say definitely) a toxic one. But I miss our friendship. I miss our jokes and our dinners out with friends and our memories. I regret that we may never get to reminisce about them, not even our memories about our friendship prior to our romantic relationship. I still love him, too. A part of me probably always will. That's the thing about first loves, isn't it? Maybe they last, maybe (probably) they won't, but first loves start to teach you what love is, and there will always be a piece of your heart reserved for them.

Of course I'm not hung up on "James" anymore. I've dated a few guys since October and the pangs I felt when I thought of him are gone. But, upon smelling his cologne for the first time since October, I realized that the memories will never be gone. Certain things will always make me think of him, and certain things will always be associated with him. Germany? Yep. The Importance of Being Earnest? Yep. Prom? Yep. Plaid button-down shirts? Yep. That cologne? Absolutely. Memories of first loves last. Some will hurt. But some are also really good. And no matter what, the relationship helped me grow emotionally and taught me a bit about what I need and what I don't need in a romantic relationship.

I truly have no idea what "James" thinks about me or about our relationship now, but I sincerely hope that he still acknowledges that we had some really good times, and that at least a tiny part of him still loves me, like a tiny part of me still loves him. And if I wanted him to know anything, it's that I miss his friendship, and that I wish him well. So here's to the good times we've had together, "James," and to the ones we'll have apart.