Why is this? Experts say, it's because your first love is the deepest. It's the biggest "learning curve", it's the most intense. Some believe that because it happens when you are just finding out who you are, you are destined to remember it forever; it shaped you. If this is to be believed then...after losing one's first love...what is there to look forward to? Can we ever truly forget the past?
I lead a strange life. The past three years (or four if you really want to count when the shenanigans began) I have been hurled into a worldwind of synesthetic, synchronistic experience. I have been plagued by signs and visions heralding the prophesies of rich new beginnings. This may sound like a dream for so many who wander through life never knowing what to expect from one day to the next but for me, it has been a nightmare. For the past few years, I loved, lost, loved, lost and waited on my first love and, it seemed, ooooonly love to come back to me, love me too, and pledge his allegiance to me. He never completed his task. And you know what? I blame her. I blame Melissa.
Melissa was his first love. Their relationship lasted three and half years...and was, apparently, filled with glorious sex, drugs and rock and roll. They fought and made up constantly and passionately. They shared apartments, dogs, holidays, friends, beds and syringes together. They lost two babies (abortion, miscarriage) and they filled each other's life with all the passionate, beautiful, bubbly things a "first love" relationship is supposed to bring. Unfortunately for him, even after asking her to marry him and setting a date...she cheated on him. The spell was broken...back to the drawing board.
But he never returned to the drawing board. He carried her with him through his next relationship. A coupling that brought him another three year period but this time it was with a sweet, pampered, drug free English teacher. At first, this new love seemed to be the answer to everything he had lost. She was sane, sexual but not a sex freak (as Melissa had been), punctual, polite, professional, basically, great housewife material. But he didn't want to wife her up. Eventually, she left too.
Where was I while this was going on, you might ask? Well...let me go back a little. I had met him a little before Melissa did. We were seventeen and working at the same restaurant. From the first day I met him, I was in T.R.O.U.B.L.E. He moved me in ways I never thought possible...he was the answer to my dreams. I fell deeply, truly, madly. But he didn't love me the same way. He never would. Still, that didn't stop me from idolizing him. I spent years trying to find a "replacement". He and I had never actually had the chance to consumate our relationship. Heck, we'd never even been on a date...so, I spent years praying for God to open a window to the one who would capture my heart in the same way...and this time, want me back.
Year after year of my young adulthood passed, and nobody showed up. I spent Christmases, Valentine's Days, and New Year's with no one to cradle me by the fire, give me a card, or kiss me at midnight. I blame this on my upbringing (constantly bullied and treated like an asexual burden) and my personality (I like what I like). When I was attracted to someone, and they me, another woman would always show up in the picture. And I would be left standing alone. Forever idolizing my first love and secretly hoping he would return someday to give me the passionate, life-changing experience being in love provides.
May 22, 2006. I am twenty-two years old. A master number. I am thriving in my major as a media student in college. I am social (for me anyway) I am enjoying life. One question still, occasionally gnaws at me, but I convince myself that he will, one day, leave my dreams...I will move on. But on this particular day, I decide to indulge myself. What the heck, I figure, it's only a small internet search, how could it hurt? So, I search his name on the social behemoth that was Myspace, and...lo and behold, for the first time in four years, I see his face...and I stop breathing, stop moving...I stop. I sit frozen in my seat...flooded with memories and emotions I haven't felt since I was eighteen (the last time I saw him) and I cry...a little. Then, I decide to message him, big.mistake.
My one message, turns into a five month ordeal between he and myself. Thinking myself to be a rational, calm person, I am turned into a bloodthirsty animal when it comes to him. I have spent the last four years without him or anyone else and I am hungry. He is dating the English teacher at the time, and I resolve to destroy their relationship. I want him. I need him. I want him to get me pregnant. I want to leave school to marry him. I want to start a family. I want...I want...I want...
But it doesn't happen. He chooses her, they go back to their life and I go...insane. My body, not having been prepare for rejection of this, the most desired of ideals, the zenith of my youth, begins to completely and totally shut down. I lose my hair. I start to have anxiety attacks. I sink into a depression that I do not recover from for three years.
During that three year time period I am asked to endure some painful shit. I cannot seem to start my career properly, I can't get out of bed without crying. A friend who I live has a similar experience to me (love experience) and I have to watch what happened to me happen again, it is torture. I try and be postive about my aching heart and soul and have bursts of optimism. "God only did this to me to prepare me for my husband!" I think. "Maybe I'm going through this so I can be a great wife and mother soon!" But, I never meet my husband. Instead I continue, for three years, to have intense dreams about him. And I want nothing more than to look in his face, kiss him until I can't move my mouth anymore...tell him I love him, and give him a son. This is what I want. I try and deny it. But this is what I want. I pray constantly. And I wait.
January 1, 2009. I go to New Orleans for New Year's Eve with friends. There is drinking, debauchery and, there is tarot card reading. The man who reads my cards tells me I have an old relationship returning soon. He tells me I am going to be asked to know what I want by this person and if I am honest with myself he will commit to me. I will have him. I go home feeling a little confused, euphoric, but confused. However, the year rolls by and nothing happens. I am battling an illness at this point no doubt aided by the stress my body has been under for the past few years. I am also contemplating a new career. And, I am doing the impossible, imagining a life..without him. Or so I tell myself.
Summer passes, fall sets in, I am out of work due to my illness, I really, really don't know what I will do with my life. One night, I go out to a bar with a friend. She mentions his name to me and I tell her, as i have come to believe that I no longer care about him, and I hope he has died. But when I get home that evening, it is another story entirely.
September 27, 2009. I find him again. This time, he is single. He is out of work too and he is waiting to go to the army. I debate whether or not to tell him anything, whether or not to message him. I eventually decide that my day has come. Do or die...I will act in favor of my heart again, maybe, I think, this was all for a reason.
I have run long on this story but let's just say the relationship didn't justify the buildup. The end did not fairly redeem the means. He turns out to be a tortured, verbally abusive, anal, drug-addicted asshole. He refuses to get STD tests, he can't seem to get a job, he yells at me for messing up the bed sheets or hitting curbs in my car. He doesn't like the way I stare at him or want to talk to him all the time...he hates me. Or at least that's what it seems like. And I don't know what to do. How do you let go of something that has meant everything to you, for most of your life?
So we attempt, tumultously to have a relationship for five months. We break up every other week. Usually I am the ender of things, I just can't stand to be screamed at. He takes in an ex-con and alcoholic with a baby and a girlfriend and lets them sleep on his floor. Then gets mad at me when I want to come over at night because I'll, "wake the baby" I hate hanging out with him since ALLLLLL he does all day is smoke weed and watch court TV. I leave his house smelly and wishing that everyone would just sign a pre-nup, or pay their damn child support.
Sexually things are tense. He abandons all sexual urges months before after I tell him we're not doing it unless he gets tested. I also refuse birth control until this happens. So when we are in bed together, I masturbate...he helps...but i want to show him that I want sex, and I want it now. I make an unconcious effort to be as horrible as possible...maybe this will change things. But it doesn't. Eventually I give in. We have sex without him being tested, without condoms because he can't stay hard with them...and without birth control.
It is...and ok experience. There are so many emotional walls, and I really don't think we were as attracted to each other as we would have wanted. Still, i try and get him excited...it's like trying to start a car with no engine. Many nights, I am racked with guilt over my inablity to completely arouse him. He even admits that he isn't excited to have sex with me. And then he bring her up....Melissa. She of the unending orgasms. She who looooooooooved sex. She who was his answer...and went away. And now, he's stuck with bullshit like me.
Well, our relationship finally ended. Do I still love him? Yes. And that idol that he created for me at seventeen...is still alive. And I hope that one day, he'll stop comparing everyone to Melissa...and be focused and in love enough with who he's with to put her on a pedestal...and treat her like a queen. In the same token, I hope I find someone who creates in me a new idol...and who thinks of me in the same way.
I guess both of us need to say goodbye to the past...and to the dreams given us by the beautiful ghosts of our youth.
Especially one named Melissa.
