True Stories From My Terrible Love Life 2 [✓]

He Was My First Love...And That's Okay.

Love (or infatuation) is blind. Most definitely.

Sometimes, I want to beat myself up for ever dating Jaguar in the first place. Sometimes, it feels cringe, and I can't imagine why I would have ever fallen in love with him. Sometimes, I don't think it was even love. And, that beating-myself-up feeling has been put in this story subconsciously, especially for the parts I've written 2-5 years after the fact. I noticed it when editing.

I saw this quote the other day that really sums things up. I don't know who originally said or wrote it, but it's scarily accurate.

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Did you know that you'll fall in love with three different people in your lifetime? (Some might rephrase this as three different stages/types of love.)

There's the first love. ... This love typically happens at a young age. You eventually grow apart. [It] probably ended over something silly. As you get older and look back at this love, you may not think this was actually love. But the truth is, it was love. It was love for how you knew love to be.

Then there's the second love. The hard one. You get hurt in this one. This love teaches us lessons and makes us stronger. This love includes great pain, betrayal, drama, [and] damage. But, this is the love where we grow. We learn what we love about love, and what we don't love about love. We learn the difference between good and bad people, but we also become closed, careful, cautious, [and] considerate. But, we now know exactly what we want and what we don't want.

Then there's the third love, and this love comes blindly. No warning. We weren't looking for this love. This love comes and finds us. We can put up any wall that we want, and this love's gonna bring that wall right down. You find yourself caring about this person so much without even trying. And, they're not your usual type either, but you just get lost in their eyes. Daily. You see beauty in their imperfections. You hide nothing from them. You want to spend the rest of your life with this person. You're honestly in shock. You're thanking the universe for bringing this person into your life. You truly love this person.

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I think people make their first love too much of a big deal. To me, it feels both significant and insignificant. It's an important learning curve, but it doesn't define you for the rest of your life. That quote made me more comfortable with accepting my own weird feels about this person, this situation, and love in general.