Love and Kisses

Day 10: Discuss your first love and your first kiss.

Shut the front door. This is going to be rather.... interesting.  Let's start with my first kiss. That is much simpler.

I was 12. A big bad 7th grader. I'm also fairly certain that I was in the minority on not having been kissed by this point in time, so no telling me I was too little. Yes. Twelve sounds incredibly young, but people are having babies at 14 so... I'm good.

There I was. A 7th grader. Starting out young on the long distance relationships. Granted it was only 30 minutes, but when neither participant is close to driving age, distance is distance. His name was David. He was my very first official boyfriend. Unless you count the boy I dated for a recess period in 4th grade. Until I got scared my mom would be mad, so I made my friends break it easy to him.

We dated for a whopping 5 months, which was my longest relationship until I was a sophomore in high school. My first kiss took place in the Barron Theatre. The movie "Are We There, Yet?" was playing. I think. With the two of us and all of his friends and my sister, we took up nearly a whole row. If not a whole row. His friends rooted us on. Two quick pecks and it was back to the movie for us.

That was that.

My first love. That's a bit trickier. I can't say I harbor any feelings for him. My heart isn't broken. I'm not in depression about it. It's just.. Well.. I do not care. Let's see if I can properly explain with a brief description of my first love*.

*Because of my age and the way the relationship went, I can't say that it was technically a first love. The way I love the Marine is so very different than how I felt about this boy. It's so much deeper. It's so much more real. I'm not saying I didn't love the other, but it wasn't even close to what I have with the Marine. This is what I want for the rest of forever, not that. That was a weak imitation.

I was 14 when we started dating. Just finished my freshman year in high school. I didn't seriously date anybody that first year and so I figured I would give it a shot. What can it hurt?

His name was Eric. He was three years older than me. I've always had a thing for older boys, clearly. We dated for almost 2.5 years. It was a long time. He left to go to college after the first year, so as I said, long distance relationships have never been a stranger for me.

In these 2.5 years, he told me he didn't love me and if I didn't change my ways he was going to leave, no questions asked (please understand, being young, I went ahead with this plan. No. I will never do that again, I am me. Take it or leave it, but I'm not changing for anybody but me). That was at the one year mark. At the 18 month mark, he told me he didn't really like who I was. He loved me, but he didn't like me. I basically told him to make up his mind because I wasn't playing his games. At almost two years, he cheated on me. After taking him back and struggling with trust issues, at 2.5 years he told me he didn't know if he loved me or not. And I walked away.

It was a fight the entire two years. He beat me down (not physically) and made me feel as though it wasn't exactly possible for somebody to actually like me for me. Because I'm fairly hard-headed, it only sank in a bit.

We had our good times, yes. Because if we didn't, it would have been easy to leave. I was young. I was naive. I thought I knew everything there is to know. To be honest though, the good times didn't stick. The bad times. The ones where I was broken. Those are the things I remember.

He hurt me. Not because we split and my heart was broken. He hurt me because I trusted him. I put my trust in somebody that failed me repeatedly. I don't wish bad things on him. I hope he has grown up. I hope he never treats somebody like that again. I hope he finds somebody who matches him. I just hope I never have to deal with him. But if I do? I will be sure to do it with a smile.

Why?

Because I have grown. I have learned. I have changed. I am better now than I ever was then. I am happy. Happier than he ever saw me. I am me. And I love every minute of it.

And I thank the Marine for part of that. He is a true blessing. But you all know that already, don't you?