3:30pm

Dear first love

Dear First Love,

I loved you. I loved you when we were kids. I watched and copied you, trying to be like you, hoping you would love me too.

When you kissed me that night, I couldn't believe it. I was so happy to have you kiss me after knowing each other for years, and I realized my sexuality because of you.

But then you left. Not physically—you changed. You ignored that it ever happened. You changed as a person afterward. You pushed me away and told me that being a woman and loving another woman would be a sin. You started to bully me, to be mean, no longer the same girl I had loved.

I was desperate for you to love me, even after you had changed, and I had changed to fit you. But you chose others before me, and I couldn't take it after being humiliated again and again by you.

Sometimes I still think of you. You were my first true love, the first girl who helped me realize who I loved, and I thank you for that. I don't thank you for the years of trauma you put me through and denied after I killed who I was to accommodate you.