How it feels like to miss your first love
I can judge how far I’ve come by how long it takes you to pop into my head after I wake up. If I make it five minutes, it’s impressive. It’s not that I want to torture myself with memories from the past—my brain is just hardwired to resurrect pictures, places, whispers, smiles, anything really, from when I was my happiest.
It’s amazing how fresh the wounds feel. The pain comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I get distracted for long enough to forget, but that only lasts for a little while. Inevitably the surge returns, and I temporarily lose myself in a memory, desperate to travel back in time.
I’m usually pretty good at pretending that I am happy alone or that I am not completely broken. But sometimes the charade falls flat and my façade of tranquility starts to crack. The cracks spread wider and wider until I can no longer lie.
That’s when I close my eyes and my throat tightens and I miss you. I let myself miss you because I loved you, because you were mine and I was yours in a way that I never thought was possible. I let myself grieve for a few minutes, and then I start up the charade again. I rebuild that wall and I face the world.
I know it will take time for me to make peace with the fact that you and I are no longer “we.” I know it will be a while before I find the strength to rearrange all the pieces and glue them back together, instead of slapping a smile on my face and lying to everyone. I try my hardest to be brave for you, for both of us. I’m sorry if you occasionally watch the façade crack, or I lose control momentarily when you are around me.
I promise I will try my hardest to remember that this has happened to both of us, not just me. I promise I will never do anything to intentionally hurt you.
I will never regret any of the time I’ve spent with you. I never will. We were incredible and crazy and weird and perfect and that’s what makes getting over us so astonishingly difficult. And that is why I miss you.
