“She Was My First Love, and My Last Goodbye”

I met her on a rainy Tuesday afternoon — the kind of day where the sky feels heavy, and the world moves a little slower. I was 17, reckless, and didn’t believe in anything permanent. Then she walked into the library wearing a red raincoat and holding a worn-out copy of The Bell Jar. She didn’t even notice me at first, and maybe that’s what caught me off guard. Most people looked, she didn’t.

Her name was Maya.

We were opposites in every sense of the word. She drank tea, I preferred coffee. She liked poetry, I lived for punk rock. She was all soft edges and quiet strength. I was chaos in a hoodie. But somehow, we just fit.

We started seeing each other more often. A shared book here, a coffee there. Before long, we were spending entire evenings watching old black-and-white movies on her dad’s broken projector or walking through the park talking about everything and nothing. She would always laugh when I tried to impress her with song lyrics. I still remember her voice: “You know, you quote more lyrics than you speak your own thoughts.”

She was right. And yet, with her, I found my own words.

That summer was everything.

We kissed for the first time under a fireworks-lit sky on the Fourth of July. I told her I loved her a month later, clumsily, nervously, over a melted ice cream cone. She smiled, kissed my cheek, and whispered, “Took you long enough.”

She was my first everything — my first love, my first heartbreak, my first reason to believe in something bigger than myself. I thought we were infinite, like those songs that never get old no matter how many times you play them.

But life isn’t a song, and happy endings aren’t always guaranteed.

College came. Different cities. Different plans. We promised to make it work. She was always better at hope than I was. I wrote her letters; she sent me books with notes in the margins. I visited when I could. The distance made her softer, and me more distant. I started missing phone calls. She started sounding tired.

Then one day, she stopped calling.

No fights. No dramatic ending. Just… silence. And that silence screamed louder than any argument ever could.

I tried to move on. Tried dating. Tried forgetting. But forgetting Maya felt like trying to forget how to breathe. Even when I thought I was okay, a song, a scent, or the sight of a red raincoat would shatter me.

Years passed. I graduated. Got a job. Changed cities. Life moved on, but a part of me stayed frozen in that summer where everything had felt possible.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got a message from her sister. Maya was sick. Terminal. She had asked to see me.

I stood at the hospital door for a long time before going in. My hands were shaking. I wasn’t ready. I’d never be ready.

She looked smaller. Fragile. But when she smiled, it was the same smile that once made my heart race. “Hey stranger,” she said.

I laughed, but it came out like a sob.

We talked for hours — about nothing, about everything. She said she never stopped loving me. I told her I never figured out how to stop. We didn’t ask what happened in between. We didn’t need to.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, she looked out the window and whispered, “Do you believe people get more than one great love?”

I shook my head. “I don’t need more than one.”

She smiled, her eyes wet. “Good. Because you were mine too.”

That night, she fell asleep holding my hand.

She didn’t wake up.

It’s strange how someone can be both your beginning and your ending. Maya was the first person who ever truly saw me. And now, she's the last person I’ll ever say goodbye to like that.

They say first love never really dies. I don’t think it does. I think it just lives inside you — quietly, eternally — like an echo that never fades.

She was my first love.

And my last goodbye.