My first love was the purest, before there was such things as worries and troubles. was a girl in New Hampshire, from four to six years old. Petting dogs and eating doughnuts and splashing about in a kiddie pool. It was pure love, the kind that smells like bubble soap and sidewalk chalk. It was the first love I ever had to be peeled away by distance.
My second love was the bitterest, always with differences between us. Three years fun that I wasnt allowed to have in my own house. Three years of passive-aggressiveness and subtle superiority. Three years of jealousy. It was my first and only fight to end in a fight, with no resolution. The only love that I regret because of who she is today.
My third love was the saddest. It took time. It came after six months of loneliness, of being the one to read a book in the back of my sixth grade classroom. Moving classes, moving desks, moving pencils are what brought us together. We were both alone. We were both hurting. When she lost her father, her mother slowly vanished as well. Three years spelled out a remarriage, lies, abuse, ending in an angry, mentally disturbed suicide that drove the family away in fear and pain. This is the first love that I actually needed to get by. We shared whispers of how we were all the family we would ever need, as long as we had each other. We battled depression, anxiety, self-harm together. We held each other close until time and space forced us to separate.
My fourth love was the darkest. The memories of him still fill me with a deep, burning fury. I never knew his wishes; He never knew my dreams. I'd never know his mind the way I knew his face. He'd never know my heart the way he knew my name.The age old dilemma. Two girls in love with the same dreamy boy; his choice between them. His choice was not the one i wanted. I was a bitter, stubborn thing for two years, clinging onto the thought of him. A confession of abuse, of rape, by the other girl is what it took to shake me. We were in seventh grade. This was my first and only love to see us as a hunk of flesh, a plaything, a doll. The fire inside as he still goes unpunished lets me know that if I ever see him again, I will not hesitate to strike him.
My fifth love was the openest. A summer camp internship, a new high school, and odd circumstances brought us together. Late night talks about family and life, love and sex, hate and darkness brought us closer. Similar problems of brain chemistry bonded us as we talked about everything and nothing. We didn't need words. Her family took me as one of their own. We colored our hair and watched television and avoided talking abut the future. It was the second love that I needed to survive, to cling to in order to remind myself that the world is not secondary.
My sixth love was the closest. We clung together and buried our tears in the grass and our wishes in the stars. When my head rested in their lap, it was their soothing fingers running through my hair that lulled me to sleep. I clutched their words dripping from pages or a screen, and pressed them to my heart. I hung reminders around my neck, from my ceiling, peeking from the inside of boxes and jars. So fragile, the two of us, yet immortal, celestial beings when brought together, our blood made of stardust and our bones knitted from nebulae. I knew their strength, their fierce love and determination. It drove me, inspired me, kept me breathing, kept my heart beating. Dates of seeing each other in person glimmered from the future, the only stars in a dark, velvet night. They keep me from swaddling my mind in cotton layers and separating from the world, replacing my blood with cough syrup. It was the third love I needed to survive. There is little doubt about where I would be today if not for her, the owner of a lovely plot of land in a cemetery.
I am needy. With never love for family, I was driven to seek out a family of my own. I find them, and I stitch them to me, phantom limbs that are extensions of myself. I will protect them fiercely, only partly for the selfish reason of fear of losing them. It scares me when I hear their words of self-loathing, of inner battles that they're sure they will lose. It makes me wonder if perhaps someone could feel that scared when I speak of demons crawling into my scars. The very notion fills me first with passive rejection of the idea, then with awe at the possibility. After all, how could someone love me when I struggle to even face myself? I've since learned that a part of giving love is giving the person someone to love back. As said by my last love, I'll stir my chamomile tea as I watch the thunderstorms from my window and read words of comfort, and remember that I truly do have reason to love.
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