Growing up and watching romances like Troy and Gabriella, Nathan and Haley, and Alex and Mason, really put me into an unrealistic view of what a highschool relationship or first love would feel like. So when I had my first crush I had no idea how to realisticly deal with the situation.
I have always been someone who catches feelings fast, considering how quickly I fell inlove with the live action peter pan, I always knew early on when I liked someone. Growing up I experinced the usual celebrity crushes as well as the young crush, my first one ever being at around 6 years old. If we are looking at things with more feelings involved my first proper crush was in my second year of high school, a mutual friend and someone, honestly, I didnt know too well. I expressed my feelings in the usual embarrasing way you do at 12/13 years old and was rejected. As much as I would love to remember every detail, my memory just isn't that good, or maybe the upcoming events in the years to come brought me to completly erase the first experience I had of how I got my first boyfriend.
Somewhere after being rejected we became friends, and eventually did begin to date, and thinking back, they were some good memories. I can still remember my first kiss, the nervous looking at eachother, feeling your heart race, not knowing where my hands should go, and the most unromantic location, for me, a large bus station. The feeling of experiencing young love was, at that time, something I was very happy to have, I got to meet his family and having my friends at the time be so excited for me and be just as invested as I was, it was a great feeling. We dated for an amount of time, but as per usual, we experienced the silly break up over nothing, that was my fault, we remained very good friends and talked pretty much every day, wether that be in school or on the phone afterwards, we dated other people but there was always something that pulled me back into his direction, he began to date someone I had previously been friends with, and I hate to admit to it, but I became a very jealous ex girlfriend, considering me and this girl had two other crushes in common, I felt history repeating itself and didn't like the idea of my first boyfriend being with them. After an argument on the last day of school me and my ex stopped talking, we grew distant and I remember feeling like I had lost a best friend, just a part of my daily routine gone because I didnt have to eat my dinner in two mouthfuls so I could go and talk on the phone to him for hours.
After somewhat growing up we found our way back and started talking again, and formed a strong friendship, I was attending college classes and made new friends and one night when I was out I realised there was still feelings there towards him. We began dating again and this time it felt different, we were older, and sort of more mature and my feelings towards him were alot stronger than they were before, but due to alot of self sabotage and doing what I thought would be best for him, I ended things, that night at home I cried myself to sleep, feeling like I had just made the biggest mistake, I planned to speak to him after the weekend at school, but when I did, I found him in one of the music rooms with the ex he had and the girl I did not get on with, I felt like I had hit breaking point and vowed to myself that I would never speak to him again.
I think I lasted around 5 months and over the years we experienced alot of up and downs, to spare the details it was alot of back and fourth, liking him and then arguing, being rejected, being used, being hurt. My friends were in constant look out of me wanting to back and usually had to knock some sense into me. We spent a couple of years dating other people, he had been in a long term relationship and I had experience my fair share of situationships, we began talking again and for the first time in around 3 years we managed to actually get on without it errupting in a full scale argument. We went on a night out together and after a few to many drinks, I confessed my feelings again, but thanks to that alcohol, he was oblivious to my confession, I still dont think to this day he knows what I said, and maybe if he heard, things could have turned out different. I was met with alot of "do you like him" over that period of time and my answer was usually "we are just good friends", and I think that is the biggest lie I have ever told.
I was approaching my 21st birthday and he attended my party and it was very clear to every person there that I was interested in him, that I still had very strong feelings for him, it just wasnt clear to him, to the point that at the end of the night, after me flirting with him all night, he began to flirt with my best friend instead and then procedded to message her over the course of a few weeks which of course didn't go down well with me, I was beyond livid, how could he see how I feel and make jokes about hitting on my friend, and actually do it, the friend he hit on was the one I found myself always confiding in things about him for nearly as long as I knew him, so she knew every single detail of my feelings, wanting to be with him, finally admitting that I actually loved him when I would never want myself to believe it, she knew it all, so I think it was a even bigger shot through the heart that it was her he hit on, it turned me into a really anxious person, I felt like I couldn't believe in what anyone was telling me, I had in my head what was happening and even when he denied alot of it, I just had some part of me that didn't beleive him. I know we weren't dating at that time but I feel like there is just some boundaries you don't cross, and that was one of. them.
Something in me changed over that time and I looked back at our time together and it felt like the tint lense had been removed and I saw everything in the recent years the way that it truly was, I was just a convience factor for him. It was clear somewhere down the line that I cared way more for him than he did for me. If he cared about me and the friendship/relationship we had, he would never have hit on my friend, and if that was just a drunken choice, then he surely would have tried to make things better, instead he got grumpy and most of the time just stopped messaging. In all the years I knew him there was so much that had been happening that I never looked in depth, but when I did, I realised I was just a way for him to pass the time as he tried to get over the ex he really only cared about. Everything made sense.
I looked at our whole story that lasted nearly 10 years and felt numb. At somepoint we liked eachother but I truly beleive he stopped having feelings for me the day we broke up and everything after that was just an easy way to have some sort of attention and he knew if he needed a boost, all he had to do was message me and I would drop everything to try and be there in any way I could. I felt like I had been in a dark room for years and by accidentally tripping over, I bumped into the light and switched it on. I had poured my heart out to him so many times and a few of those times I was definitely led on. Letting go was probably the hardest thing I had to do, saying goodbye to alot of my first experiences was a difficult time and I felt sorry for that 12 year old girl that first caught feelings for the boy who she thought would be in her life for a long time, and even though he was, it was never the way she would have imagined and it wouldnt be ending the way that it did.
I got rid of any memories I had, any photos that I had kept for keepsakes, any sentimental items, and deleted him of all social media, as well as his family, and deleted every photo I had of him, I deleted all of his birthday messages and posts that he appeared in over all socail media and truly detoxed him from my life. It looked like nothing had changed but I probably erased around 1,000 memories and moments that had been ingrained into my head for all those years. I made a promise to myself that I wouldnt be at his beck and call and cut contact, something I was never very good at, and for the first time in 10 years, when he tried to reach out and add me on social media, I pressed decline, every time. I felt like I had just completed a mountain climb, the emmense feeling of proudness I had within myself. I made that promise to myself but also to that 15 year old teenager who was filled with guilt for breaking up with her boyfriend, and I wish that 21 year old me could travel back in time, hug her, tell her she made the right choice and then lead her down a different path than the one she went down.
Approaching 22, I'm not the same girl I was, and I'm happy that I'm a different to the girl he knew, this is someone that he doesnt get the right to know, or be apart of witnessing. From that situation I am more guarded than what I was, which I see as a good thing, I learnt alot of lessons which I will take into future situations involving a relationship when I make the decision to have that experience again. I remember my friend once telling me that she wishes she had a high school boyfriend, and there's alot of pros and cons to having that experience. I see where I made my errors, and after spending so many years of thinking "what if I never broke up with him" or "we could probably still be together", I am proud to finally have the thought of "he wasn't the right person for you" and "you deserve so much more".
I loved him, for what I knew love to be at that time, and even though I don't want reminded about him, I know he will be the first boy I think of when my future children have that first kiss or first relationship or need comforting after their first heartbreak, he will always be my first love and I have to give him that credit, but I know he won't be my last and when I experience love again, and find myself in a relationship, it is going to be so much more meaningful, so much more amazing, than the high school boyfriend I once had, and I can truly see what love is suppose to feel like.