My First Love

He seems happy with her. I’m glad. He deserves someone who’ll make him smile.

I don’t think I ever really did make him happy. He didn’t make me happy. He used to make me feel dirty and small. But then I used to make him feel awful so no one’s really more to blame.

I was just sex to him and he knew that’s how I felt. So I would try to anger him to see if I could break him. I wanted to see if I could make him snap, to see if he’d hurt me. He almost did and every time I’d see how hurt it would make him. It finally made me feel powerful, instead of just his puppet on a string.

Still, we thought we were in love. Yet we’d never proven it to each other in any way. There were no gifts, no public displays of affection. We were good at cheating on each other and making sure the other knew, just so we could see how hurt the other was. I’ve realised now I was never that hurt and probably neither was he. We just wanted to own each other, but we didn’t.

I don’t own the man I love now and he doesn’t own me and it’s made me realise I don’t need to cheat. When you’re happy you’re complete with not just them, but yourself. I think I used to cheat because I had just become someone’s sex toy so I didn’t think I was anything but sex.

I fell in love with someone else while I was still with him. 'L' made me feel like a real person, he wanted to know about me and what I wanted from life. He could have been perfect in almost every way but I still thought I loved the one who hurt me so I hurt him. I left my new love in the dirt, no trace of where I’d gone or why just because he was too nice and I didn’t understand why I deserved that.

It took me over a year to realise that I didn’t love him anymore.

I hadn’t seen him in a few months and I’d been pining for him. But my friends told me I needed to go out and find someone to have some fun with. That’s how I met my real love. I knew he was the one as soon as I lay my eyes on him. There was no one else I could ever love more.

So I left an old flame in the dirt again. He begged for me and I toyed with his emotions for a while, pretending that I still wanted him, just so I could hurt him one last time. I was being a bitch and I knew it so I finally let him go live his own life. I didn’t do it in the best way. I disappeared like a ghost because I couldn’t face saying goodbye.

A year later he’s found someone new. I saw them walking down the street and they looked so happy. I’ve never seen him with such love in his eyes. He never saw me. I don’t know if he’s ready to see me and I don’t want to hurt him anymore. I’ve forgiven him but he’s not the sort that would so easily forget. It hurt a little bit but I think what hurt the most was that we’d held each other back for so long. We’d stopped each other from finding people who would really love us, who would talk us up instead of talking down to us.

But we found love eventually and now I realise it was worth all the pain before. It made us who we were supposed to be and showed us how really to treat the people we love.