First love is a blessing and a curse. First love is unlike any other. It leaves an everlasting impression on your heart that never fades.
A virgin heart is naive and uneducated, to say the least. The love of first love is reckless and spontaneous. The love of first love is young, wild and free.
The intensity of first love is something we wait for, something we dream of. We imagine our first kiss and our first “I love you.”
However, understanding first love is complex. The concept is a foreign language. At first it is a honeymoon, a golden age of adrenaline rush love and butterfly storms. Then, we question. We doubt. Certainty becomes uncertainty. The adrenaline rush fades. Slowly, it disappears.
How do I know this is love? I’ve never loved before. How do I know if my first love is the love of my life? I’ve never loved anyone else. How do I know if my first love is my soulmate? I don’t know what a soulmate is.
Question after question — they drive us wild. They drive us insane. But it’s okay to question, and it’s certainly okay to doubt. In fact, it’s a good thing. It means the love is worth fighting for.
Most importantly, it is okay to walk away from your first love, to accept that first love is sometimes merely the “happily” phase of “happily ever after.”
We never imagine the pain of first love, maybe because it is just too damn painful to imagine. And that’s what truly changes us: the pain of love.
Understand that love strikes more than once. And the love of first love is what gives us the strength and courage to love again, to breathe again. Subsequent loves repair the pieces of a broken heart with ease. They pick up the shattered pieces so naturally that we forget our hearts were ever broken in the first place. It is both remarkable and magical.
The heart works in strange and mysterious ways.
First love is a blessing and a curse. A cruel joke of the universe. It introduces us to the idea of love; it introduces to a new feeling of pain. Savor first love. Savor the love after first love.
Everything happens for a reason. Trust the heart. Follow the heart. Take care of the heart. Embrace the blessing. Embrace the curse. And embrace the glorious hot mess of first love.