Young Love (Essay)

 I always thought it'd be her since the moment I met her. She was like a much kinder version of myself, but maybe that's where we but heads. She was like me, but also very different. I was a last-minute person, last minute things made her anxious. I used to make the first hit if someone wronged someone I loved, she fought only to protect herself if needed. She was raised in a quite small town, I was raised in the knockoff of the ghetto. I could be kind and caring when I wanted, she always was. There are many things near what felt like the end of what could have been a relationship that came out and when these things came out, there was nothing I could do to stop them from falling on the table. I opened up to her which was horrifying, I wasn't sure what she was going to say or do. She told me to get therapy; my last resort.

I would question myself every night and ask myself: is this love? Is this what love feels like because before things went sour and we'd first met I'd never written better. I would think about the thought of losing her and I cried every time. I'd have sleepless nights because I would overthink it and I had myself convinced she'd hate me one day and want nothing to do with me. Seventeen and I was questioning if I knew what love was, what it was about. Of course, you'll be reading this and thinking to yourself, "what kind of seventeen-year-old knows what love feels like?" Writing this, the same question came to my mind. People think at the age of seventeen you have no idea what love feels like, but I was so dead set on the question that it just wouldn't leave me alone.

Every time we tried to meet in person, something always came up. That Sunday she got too anxious, and that, I could understand. The thought of meeting her made my body shake in fear that she may not like me. I never had that happen to me before so when she asked me to drive up to her town, I lied and said we had no gas. When my mom found she wasn't coming over, she went straight to the grocery store. It wasn't a full lie though, during the winter, we'd normally be running on empty for gas and that was normal for me. It wasn't only gas (I mean, they've offered to pay for the gas), but it was also the state of the car. My father always found it hard to get work during the winter but we'd always have breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The moment my father got his tax back, the $600 he got for the first payment went straight to the car.

Now, you may be thinking, "why not just tell her this?" You'd think she'd understand or something and in reality, she probably would have, but saying that my car isn't in winter condition would be hard to say during the beginning of March in Canada. I always tried to keep to myself, I found saying I'm good and that I had nothing to worry about would soon make me okay. I thought saying those things would just make everything go away and one day I wouldn't have a worry in the world! I was naive. I am naive. Maybe I got it from my mother because everyone knows my biological father was a drug addict with no hope of seeing his kids after losing in court miserably. I mean, he wanted us so bad he never attended one day in court for over a year.

There was still that question in the back of my mind: Is this love? When I talked to her, or even thought about her, I felt a way that I felt only once in my life, and that was with my first girlfriend. That was a closet relationship and no one knew about it until I was about fifteen. I still think about her (not my first girlfriend) and I get that same feeling and I still don't know what to call this feeling. Is it love? Or is it something else? How would I know anyway? I was only seventeen, a naive seventeen-year-old at that who thought they knew everything. Maybe it was because I grew up listening to Taylor Swift, but I couldn't blame my actions on someone like her. She makes music about more than just her love stories. Has she found love?

People have this thing where they like to say when you find love, you'll know. You'll just know. When a teenager as young as sixteen says they found love, that saying just seems to have vanished. You can be too young to find love, but if you can't find love in high school, how do people who were dating in their teens get married in their twenties and die in each other's arms? Now, I'm not saying that's the case for everyone, but the one's it is true for. Can you find love as a teenager? Is it possible to have met the one, like Hannah Montana said, in your teens? Could you know right away, or would you have to wait years to know? I believe if it was love, you'd know not long after, but that's just me. It seems no matter what I do, the question just seems to follow and never fade away.

I once wrote a poem that I called What is Love on June 13th, 2022. I described it as one of the most beautiful feelings that will have downs at times; nothing is perfect. The world we're living in is falling apart. In this poem, I described it as something human nature can decide for itself. "Something so weak, but so powerful all at once. Makes you see the better in someone rather than the worst. But can also make you blind in ways. Love." That is toxic love and is something I've felt before. I'm better at identifying this now. Thankful for that, I still couldn't figure out if what I was feeling for this girl was love. It was the question that haunted the back of my mind, my dreams, my body, my life. I find sometimes you need to be dramatic in this line of work to get a word across sometimes, but this is not one of those times.

"Mostly good, sometimes bad. Trust needed, trust being there. Laughs can be heard, but never for the worse. The joy of people always being there, no matter the situation. It's a heartwarming feeling, you'll know when you get it. Have you ever wondered: What Is Love?" This - to me - was what a healthy relationship should feel like; nothing is perfect. Neither is a single person on this earth. Everyone has toxic traits, imperfections we try to hide, and feelings we keep locked up in a box terrified someone will use them if they ever found them. Sound like you? If you say no, we both know that you're lying. No one is perfect and everyone tries to hide it, but could that be why we can't find what real love is anymore? Is that why I was questioning my love for a girl I knew for three months?

Relationships were never my strong suit, what I would attract was toxic people and I wasn't sure how. Of course, the relationship wasn't perfect, but that doesn't mean that I was perfect in the relationship. I'm not perfect, my sister isn't perfect and neither is your best friend. What about your partner (if you have one)? Have you ever questioned if they loved you, or if you loved them? Things like that shouldn't even be a thought in any kind of relationship, and with her, I'm still trying to find out. She and I aren't together which is a good thing. Not only because I've known her for three months, but because in three months I still cannot dictate my own feelings for her. Will I ever know if these feelings I have for her are love? One day, yes, but when will one day come?

*(1385 words)*