“I learned several years ago never to mistake attention for affection.”
—John Mayer
February 2012
3 posts
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.”
—Andy Warhol
January 2012
7 posts
Dancin' Away With My Heart
Lady Antebellum
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
“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.
“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.
December 2011
10 posts
“It’s amazing, really, just how much pain the human heart can take.”
—Nora Roberts
Yellow (Coldplay cover)
Sara Bareilles
a Sara Bareilles cover of “Yellow” by Coldplay
your skin and bones turn into something beautiful
you know I love you so
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
—Emily Dickinson
Don’t cleanse yourself of the memorabilia collected in the duration of your relationship. If it’s true love, you will need those precious valuables to remind you of how good you once had it. Even if you know you will never get back together with your once-beloved significant other, it does not mean you should forget, in the event you may succumb to settling or giving up.
I once had a burning ceremony with my best girlfriends where we each placed flammable items into a fire and thought long and hard about what the douche bag had done to us and why it was really over. That was great, but all I was left with was a pile of smelly remnants and a reminder of how poor my taste was in those dreaded high school days.
Before we met, I had the most trivial list of expectations in a man that I required all my boyfriends to meet. I thought I knew everything I wanted but there you were - something so different and so wonderful. Why is it that the one person who is so far from what I thought I wanted and cared about in life ended up being the one I will never forget and never fall out of love with?
Through all this ache and numbness, I have one conclusion. I chose you. Not because you are wise beyond your years or the epitome of chivalry. I chose to be with you. And as much as I try to tell myself that I am entirely capable of choosing someone else, I do believe it’s too late. I have already fallen madly in love with you and nothing has changed from the day you left me.
I love your imperfection. I love our mad desire to grow up, restrained by our internal immaturity. I love your perfect eyes when you look at me like there is nothing else that can stop us from loving each other. I loved absorbing your thoughts as you’d hold me silently and then whisper “we’re doing good, aren’t we?”
It’s midnight of Christmas day and I am sitting here at my computer, writing mindlessly and posting any words that enter my mind and leave my fingers. I remember exactly one year ago when we exchanged gifts, commenting on my inappropriate and your thoughtful taste. We were, as I thought, in love. That is nothing compared to how much I love you now.
We are not currently together, but oh if you knew how much I still love you.
