A Real First Love

I think we are all under the notion that your first love is that boy you meet in high school at some point. You know the one that took you to homecoming dances and the movies. The one you snuck into your room that one time for a kiss that lasted more than one minute or dealing with the uncomfortable seats at the theater (I pre-date the loungers they have now). The one that you spend your summer after senior year with knowing that "we can do long distance" was just another way to peacefully move on without the pain of a real break-up. Puppy love that we mistaken for that first love. That boy wasn't him.

I knew the moment he touched my hand inadvertently that I needed him. I knew even though I didn't care to admit it to myself at the time that he was the one and he knew it too. When our eyes connected, we knew something in the stars, the cosmos we would later call it as we wandered around Hampton's campus deep into the night, that we would be forever engrained into each others' hearts. At first we hid behind what my campus encouraged for new students, big sisters and brothers to help freshmen come in and transition to college well. He was my "little bro", my little bro that would eventually become my bestfriend, one of my most trusted confidants that somehow knew my soul without me opening my mouth. I know what you're thinking, he was your "soulmate" then. No he wasn't and if there's another challenge about soulmates, we can talk about him but my Lito wasn't that.

My Lito was put in my life so I understood what it meant to love someone and love them hard and truly hurt knowing that love wasn't forever. I think we started to figure it out toward the second semester, because we got so much enjoyment out of picking apart the people we were dating. Joking about them and how silly we were for even bothering with them. But those jokes were deeper than that and our friends could see it. I think the campus realized it long before we did, that we belonged together at least in that moment we did. Maybe I should have known that I needed more, that we needed more when I felt this pang of jealousy every time his airheaded girlfriend grabbed his hand when I was around, she would grab the hand that belong to me and only me. Maybe he should have known when he would convince me to go with him to a party instead of the guy I was dating. Maybe we should have known when he would take me into his arms and dance with me and it was like no one else was in the room. Maybe we should have known that night he grabbed my hand on the way to our friend's party and didn't tell her that he was going to a party that night.

He grabbed my hand while I sat next to our mutual friend, a friend I had been whispering to about how I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take her, I couldn't take him, and I needed to know yes or no. Of course this was after a few drinks, enough drinks to open you up but not enough to wipe your memory of whatever decision you made that night. He grabbed my hand and led me to the little crowded hallway in the tiny apartment, where I decided to sit on the dryer that was in a small closet. His hands were on either side of me, looking me directly in the eyes. I could feel his breath so close to my lips as my heart stopped with every inch that disappeared. I don't even remember the song that played in the background, I think they had to turn it down and had everyone pretend to be watching the fight because the cops came to the door. But he was the only thing that mattered in that moment. The moment that would validate whether I was crazy or just crazy. Whether we just spent too much time together or I was truly in love with him. Madly in love with him. It felt like an eternity before his lips met mine even though it was maybe a minute or two, but when they did I finally understood how they felt in the thousands of sappy love movies we watched and the books I read. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words wasn't enough for us (and it took a lot to keep this at the length it is because even now I need more than 5,000 words to make you understand but this is condensed). As we got lost in the kiss, as we faintly heard our friends walk past saying finally as they laughed, it was like for a small moment in time everything in the universe had aligned for us. We were finally where we were suppose to be even if it was for a short amount of time.

And for a moment, however so brief, we were lost in our paradise. Lost in us. It wasn't without it's problems like with all things. I honestly think we were just another young adult PG-13 love story without the ending that everybody wanted. You know at the end where it's implied they end up together forever after all the bullshit. If you think that's this story, you can stop reading now. We were Crazy/Beautiful without the sex scenes or the sex in general but it doesn't end with us enduring past everything. See we lived in the rise of the internet, but when the internet was limited to college students only and MySpace was very much a live and thriving. So with that it meant finding out his double life (that I knew about but I guess we never set that boundary line that yes guys count) and the fact that well I was probably selfish too, I had my own needs and at home I did what I wanted. And when we got back from winter break, it was clear that maybe we weren't just made for one another but the people we happened to be in the moment the cosmos brought us together were also toxic for each other. That moment he felt a guy that was talking to me at a party was just a little too friendly and I didn't reject it and he grabbed me by the shoulders with a fire in his eyes. I saw the anger and possessiveness in his eyes. I saw in his eyes I was his and his only. Just like when I got into with girls or guys I thought just came a little too close, the arguments I would start. I think we almost thrived on the thought that we didn't just want the other, we were so screwed up individually that we needed each other. I can't really tell you how screwed up we both were, I would never expose him like that because I will love him until the day I die. But individually our toxicity was why the universe was trying to fix us the best way it knew how: the hard way.

The honeymoon, the madly in love parts all came crashing down that next year. At this point, the worst parts of us were exposed and we needed each other as a crutch. All it would take is one small bad move to quite literally kill us both. I was hanging on by a string, he was the string. And the thing is I broke first. I was the string he was holding on to and I broke. So he broke too. And when I tell you it was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life, there are truly no words for it. See there are people out there that claim they married their first loves, that their high school sweethearts were their first loves but I can't really believe that. I read that you have three great loves in your life: First, Hard, and the one that Lasts. The first hurts so badly. It hurts because you realize that if you don't change now, it will always hurt. You'll never find anything that last if you don't. I loved and still do love Lito with my entire soul but in the moment the universe brought us together it was only to realize that individually we were broken and we needed to fix ourselves or else this would be the result every time.

You never stop loving your first love or any of your loves for that matter. That is something that will never change and that's how I know he was my first love. The guy I dated in high school, I honestly don't think I ever loved him but just liked him really hard. I never felt how I felt with Lito. My breakup with Lito was hard for a long time. When we broke up, it just ended. We collapsed, we hurt each other to the point of no return and it's a hurt that we probably didn't have control over. Something the cosmos knew was going to happen. Because of that, we didn't have true closure until I met the guy that I realized was my last. I knew we needed closure that we never got when I felt a barrier I put up and I was ready to finally get it right. I wrote him an email in 2011 right before I was leaving to study abroad, never thinking he would even reply and we ended up on the phone after almost two years of not speaking. That call I realized that we would never stop loving each other but we realized we both had to fix ourselves if we didn't want to lose out again. It's funny we tried to be friends for a long time after that but I think at some point we realized that we could never be friends again. That the moment we set eyes on each other again it wouldn't be as simple as we thought. Honestly he realized before I did. And I was okay with that.

The universe works in a such a funny way and gives us so many opportunities to get on the right path, whether it be rocky or smooth is on us. Am I content now with my last? Yes I am. I knew he was the one even when that hard love, that love so much like your first made me question everything and still does. But the lesson is all of this is learning what you can change and you can't. That's all the universe is doing, helping us figure out the difference between the two.