First Love vs. Second Love

I grew up excited to fall in love only once. Maybe it was the fairytale happy endings I’d been sold by the fistful from the Mickey Mouse industrial complex, or maybe it was because I was lucky enough to see my parents and friend’s parents be in love and in my young mind, I couldn’t comprehend that they’d ever been with anyone else. 

Those feelings still thrived inside of me when I fell in love for the first time. Because I completely bought into the idea that first love was final, it took me a while to allow myself to enjoy the feeling. I had imbued it with such gravity that I became terrified of it. I was terrified of the timing, I was terrified that I was going to lose myself in it, I was terrified that I wasn’t feeling it the right way, not expressing it the right way, or that any modicum of conflict meant it was diminishing. Up close, everything about it inspired fear.

It was sudden and uncomfortable and completely overwhelming. The falling was equal parts ecstasy and distress. Not the harmonious ending I’d envisioned for myself. I grappled with so many different flavors of uncertainty that even when I finally settled into the feeling of being in love, a small percentage of me still maintained that I was doing it wrong. 

However, the majority of my being had finally found a way to enjoy it. Being in love is as great as they say. There is a reason so much art is fueled by the feeling or lack thereof. I’m not nearly deft enough with words to even attempt to describe it to you. No matter how satisfied you were with your life before it, it somehow makes you into a more tangible version of yourself. It makes everything around you seem warmer and brighter. 

That’s why it hurts so bad when it wanes and eventually stops. My first love ended in my first true heartbreak. It felt like a personal failure. I had failed in securing my first love for eternity. My mind plagued me with tiny instances I could’ve handled differently and my heart simply ached for that warm, safe feeling of being loved. 

So I regressed to the version of the truth I’d been sold on as a child. I toyed with the idea that love wasn’t for me. Maybe I was just meant to have many relationships or no more at all. I once again became obsessed with the idea of first love - and even developed a jealousy towards my friends who were still with theirs. 

As with most things, time healed these wounded emotions back into something softer and more true to my own beliefs. My heart had put itself back together and recognized how lucky it had been to have experienced something so powerful. 

I was lucky to have experienced something that changed me. To have learned how to let myself be in love. How to love someone else and how to let them love me back. Because I let it change me, falling in love a second time has been completely different. 

Falling in love a second time was like waiting for the arrival of a much loved friend at the airport. You’ve been apart for long enough that you wonder if your connection will be the same as it once was and you wait there, a little bit anxious of the potential differences, but mostly vibrating with excitement, craning your neck to spot them as soon as they land. 

Of course it’s different. It’s directed towards someone different, it’s at a different point in my life, and the nature of the relationship is different. But what is most striking to me is how much easier it was for me to fall this time. Because I had been in love before, I had no trouble recognizing it this time around. I was able to identify that strong, undeniable feeling and embrace it, rather than try to wrestle with it in terror as I had last time. After my first heartbreak, I entertained that ugly thought of never falling in love again. Thinking that being in such excruciating pain was not worth whatever preceded it. I ended up surprising myself by barely even hesitating when it came around again. 

I have no doubt that part of this is due to familiarity. But I also think part of it is also that I know what is at stake now. I know what it feels like to be completely in love and then to lose it. I know that while it was brutal, I learned and I grew and I recovered. Most importantly, I know that it was worth it. If I do get my heart broken again, my future self will probably want to punch my present self in the face for writing this, but she’ll also know deep down that I’m right, and that she’ll eventually feel this way again too. 

If you look closely, I think you can see the love on my face in real time….