The first love
He is beautiful, violent, passionate, tender, heartbreaking, narrow between laughter and tears, between happiness and disarray, between solidity and instability. The first love is strong, untouchable, imperishable, indestructible. It makes us go through engaging emotions, tickles our hearts, illuminates our eyes, gives meaning to our life. And then it collapses. All of a sudden.
Here is what I wrote (a long time ago) to define my first love, once it had spread in crumbs:
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A languid look. A seductive smile. The first kiss. The life that lights up. The first signs of tenderness. A complicity that flourishes. The first time. Messages. The letters. Love that overflows everywhere. Life that becomes magical. The bewitching looks. Passionate hugs. Sincere and touching words. Sensual caresses. The many calls. The reunion at the station. The acme of happiness. Travel. Laughter. Crying. Jealousy. The screams. We hug each other and we get tired. The break. We hurt ourselves. We tear ourselves apart. Hurtful words. We remain friends. We see each other again. We fuck. It doesn’t work. We draw a line. We are depressed. We send messages to ourselves. We call ourselves. We insult ourselves. We forget ourselves. Who cares. We miss each other. We talk to each other again. We see each other again. It’s not working. We hate each other. Messages are sent back. We re-cry. We pretend. We hate each other. We disappear.
Rereading this text, I tell myself that it is a good summary of the first love. So why is he so strong, so brutal? Why are we finding it so difficult to draw a line under it?
The “first” (The first love)
First love is synonymous with discovery. We learn with him, we move forward, we build ourselves step by step and this, without any means of comparison, since he is the first. In future relationships, we always return to this first love because we do not forget it, it remains stuck in the corner of our head, whether we like it or not. And that’s what makes all the beauty and all the magic of these first emotions in love: with the first love, we do not compare, because we do not have the means.
History is to be written: Our History. And what a joy to invent the novel together, as lovers. Discover every day what love is, what it is like to feel your heart beating so hard that you have the impression that he would like to escape, to dream of the other, to feel the unbearable lack when he is away from us.
Innocent obstacles
The first love is passionate because it is strewn with obstacles: distance, studies, internships, parents… We compare ourselves to Romeo and Juliet, we complain: “I hate my mother, I want to die, why doesn’t she want me to go and sleep at your house tonight???!!!!”. And if I laugh half while writing this sentence, I can tell you that a few years ago, when I pronounced it, I had the impression that my life no longer had any meaning, I was helpless, empty, sobbing. I didn’t see the point of my weeks if I wasn’t rewarded on the weekend, by going to see my lover.
Everything takes on an incredible and disproportionate proportion. And these little obstacles finally keep the couple alive, because you feel like you’re constantly fighting for the other and even if you suffer from it, the couple is constantly spiced up.
A big step (The first love)
The first love marks the end of childhood and the arrival in the adult world. We are finally in a pivotal period where we are still looking for ourselves. Where innocence is still present and where reality is gradually knocking on our door. The first love is therefore the transition between these two very distinct worlds, which is also why it remains anchored in the memory.
The reference
Even when it’s over, even when it’s been ten years since we saw him again… The first love is part of our references because it built us. In a positive or negative way, by the way. In any case, we emerge grown from this history, we know that we will not make the same mistakes again, we know what we want now and above all, what we never want again.
For example, if we have come across an extremely jealous and possessive man, we will know how to spot them afterwards and not reproduce the same mistake. Thus, all the relationships that follow the first love, are, in one way or another, compared to him.
An idealization of reality (The first love)
First love is a fantasy, an idea that we have of ideal love. The first love is extremely strong because we love Love. We refer to the clichés of romantic films and we try to identify ourselves, or even reproduce the same acts. Kissing under a fountain, making love in a cove, running in a wheat field holding hands, jumping into each other’s arms at the train station, shouting “I love you” in the middle of a crowd…
In short, we literally do not care about the look of others, we are “one”. That is the difference. The first love is not the result of the sum 1 + 1, it encompasses the two personalities in a passionate fusion.
The first love represents eternal youth, the innocence that we would like to find forever. It embodies emotional purity, it is unique.
A breakup shocks (The first love)
When it collapses, it feels like you’re losing everything all at once, like that, in one word. Life loses its sweet taste, and it is difficult to move forward. Especially for the one who got dropped and didn’t really expect it. So often, we try to see each other again, we would like the feelings to come back, for history to resume its course. Of course not. It’s really over, and innocence has evaporated with it.
We have grown up, we feel it in us. And it hurts. Like a human who turns into a mutant (yes we see that in the movies), we suffer from suddenly changing, as if our body and mind were also mutating.
And then with time, a lot of time sometimes, we look back at this idyll by remembering the memories, a touch of nostalgia in the hollow of the heart. But we know for a fact that it could not have worked for good and that we had valid reasons to put an end to our novel.
