FIRST LOVE

When I first met my ‘first love,’ I
was yet to have experienced any
devastating heartbreak, so I was
so vulnerably naive and excited to
feel the butterflies in my
stomach. Only if I had known that
that feeling was the sign of the
most heartless despair, I would’ve
no doubt swayed away from this
chapter of my life.
The anticipation for his name to
appear on my phone screen or
even a mere chance to
“accidentally” bump into him gave
me shivering hopes as a mean for
‘us’ to finally happen. Each phone
call, each word, each smile he
showed gave me uneasy yet
delightful daydreams of that final
day he would realize what a gem
I am. And to my joy, ‘we’
happened. Without explicitly
expressing my desperate feelings
for him, my strategy of
embedding my presence in his life
worked and soon enough, we
were labeled an item.
I loved each moment I shared
with him. Each fight gave me
more hope than despair, as I
believed it would strengthen our
relationship for the better. For
almost a year, I had more love
and fun in me than I have ever,
all because he never neglected my
efforts to keep our relationship
strong. But I never made anything
look too obvious, or better yet
actually tried to seem oblivious to
any flaws that surfaced from him
and assured myself, “he’s only
human.” But my incessant efforts
of pretending our destined
compatibility soon tired me out,
and when I gasped that brief
breath of air, he’d already sensed
the bluff of our relationship I had
tried so hard conceal.
And like that, ‘we’ were gone.
No, he was gone. I was still at the
same place where we left off,
waiting for him to overlook my
weary-state and realize that I had
taken my breath of relief to last
another year, only if he’d agree to
come back to me.
But this never happened; he never
came back.
For weeks, I couldn’t eat or drink
anything but my own tears to
sleep, which worried my friends
greatly. They tried to console me,
feed me, even bad-mouth my now
ex-boyfriend as a mean to bring
my cheery self back. But as much
as I appreciated their constant
tries of comfort, nothing,
absolutely nothing could help me
overcome the fact that he was
gone. Easier than how night
follows day, he vanished from my
life. And even it being my own
breakup, I still couldn’t see how
his actions were possible. I mean,
how do you wash down a year of
each other’s presence down the
drain with absolutely no visible
remorse? Weren’t we in the same
relationship? Shouldn’t we have
had the same amount of love for
each other? Then shouldn’t we
hurt the same?
It simply wasn’t fair.
I adored him in ways no one else
could, overlooked even his most
fatal flaws and embraced them
with a seemingly naive mis-
acknowledgement that wouldn’t
alter his pride. Blatantly put, he
fell short at night. Or in other
words, his love-making was lame.
Or maybe his sole presence
aroused me too greatly, which no
pleasure could surmount the turn-
on. Also, his other flaw… Being an
English major and a language
lover myself, his too often display
of ignorant uses of vocabularies
and grammar in English bothered
me greatly. Though I never
pointed them out because, again, I
couldn’t bear to hurt his pride,
his most prized obsession.
It’s been two years already and to
my unexpectant yet delightful
surprise, I met a few great people
along the way. One special
person, though not together
anymore, helped me overcome my
fear of loving and losing by
showing me that the most
important aspect of a relationship
is trust and appreciation. I don’t
self-deprecate myself, or let alone
blame only myself for the sorry
outcome of my ‘first love’.
To this day, I still think he is the
one incapable of love because one
who doesn’t know how to
appropriately or at least
appreciatively receive love, cannot
give.
The only thing I got out of this
relationship was realizing my
capability of loving someone
wholeheartedly.
“If it was something so light it
could end in one night, we were
fooling ourselves the whole time.”