I learned several years ago never to mistake attention for affection.
“
| — | John Mayer |
I was listening to First Love by Adele and became inspired to write a post about, well, first loves. Sorry I’ve been M.I.A. lately. There are many personal and probably boring-to-hear reasons for that.
First loves are hard, aren’t they? There isn’t really anything as magical as it. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before. When I get to the heart of the matter, however, I really do wonder if we are ever able to love as hard and purely as we do the first time around. Because whatever you feel with this new person, no matter how wonderful and perfect they are, must be a feeling that you have already reached heights with someone previously. And if you are shaking your head in disagreement, maybe you weren’t really in love.
When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.
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| — | Andy Warhol |
You headed off to college at the end of that summer and we lost touch
I guess I didn’t realize even at the moment we lost so much
I haven’t seen you in ages
Sometimes I find myself wondering where you are
For me you’ll always be eighteen and beautiful and dancing away with my heart
please wear the face, the one where you smile
because you lighten up my heart when I start to cry
forgive me first love, but I’m tired
I need to get away to feel again
this love has dried up and stayed behind
and if I stay I’ll be a lie
excuse me first love, but we’re through
I need to taste a kiss from someone new
It’s one of those things you never know for certain because there’s no way to enter all the relationship data in a computer and have it spit out a definitive answer. You can’t quantify love, and if you try, you can wind up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality - the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom - almost never - an even proposition. Someone always loves more.
“
| — | Emily Giffin |
There never really is quite something as magical and raw as a first love. And when you experience it with someone who has never previously been in love, it is stunning. I never wanted it to end.
The idea that two innocent people are able to find their way to love is such a phenomenon. As many have realized, love is a continual process. You either grow fonder of your significant other or you find it dying away. The last memory I have of you is how madly in love I was. The way my hands clenched around yours because it was the only reason you couldn’t leave. My tears, my pleas, nothing else was working.
I remember the expression on your face so vividly. Completely checked out. You were no longer my boyfriend but just someone who wanted to separate. I ask myself all the time why it is that I miss you so much.
I have concluded that it isn’t necessarily you I miss, but that ecstasy of being in love for the first time. Every day was an undiscovered emotion and I never wanted it to end. I think I will find love again one day, but it won’t be the same. That’s what I’m scared of. I am so in love with being in love with you.
there’s a corner of your heart just for me
I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart
there’s one minute of your day
I will leave this man just to occupy one minute of your day
just to stay in the corner of your heart
“I promise to wake up more in love with you than I was the day before.”
I honestly believed that my 2011 new year’s resolution would be the first I would ever keep. Then, in the eighth month, you left me. Somehow I still managed to keep that resolution.
My 2012 resolution?
Try to wake up a little less in love with you than I was the day before.
