They say your first love changes you.
Mine didn't.
LIt just confirmed what I already feared—that love, no matter how beautiful it begins, always ends up leaving me behind.
I was still young, still half-child and half-shadow, when I first stepped into the soft, dangerous world of affection. It wasn't real love—I can see that now—but it felt like something close. Something warm. Something different from the coldness I'd always known.
For the first time, someone saw me.
Or maybe I just imagined it because I needed it so badly.
A smile exchanged at the right moment. A message left on read and then answered when I thought I was forgotten. Late-night calls filled with laughter that didn't feel forced. I mistook these small acts of attention as love, because I had never seen the real thing. I was grasping at anything that looked like tenderness, even if it burned my fingers.
But those early relationships never lasted long.
One moment I was everything. The next, I was "too much," or "too emotional," or "too intense."
I told myself it was because I was still figuring things out.
I told myself maybe I was the problem. Maybe if I was less needy. Less dramatic. More patient. More pretty. Less me.
And every time it ended, it took something from me.
A little bit of hope.
A little bit of self-worth.
A little bit of the girl who still believed that love could be enough to fix things.
Still, I didn't stop. Because even when it hurt, being wanted, even for a short while, felt better than being invisible.
Then came sixteen.
He wasn't like the others.
He was calm. He listened. His words weren't heavy with expectations. For the first time, I felt like someone saw the cracks in me and didn't look away. He made me feel like maybe—just maybe—I wasn't broken beyond repair.
And I fell. Fast. Hard. Desperately.
I clung to him like he was the cure to all the love I never got. I poured everything into him—the love I had saved up in silence for years, the affection I'd never been allowed to give, the version of me that was still soft still dreaming.
But love born from hunger can quickly become obsession.
I started to crave him like oxygen. Every text meant something. Every unread message triggered a spiral. Every pause in attention felt like abandonment.
I wanted more.
More of him.
More reassurance.
More proof that I was finally loved.
And he—at first patient—began to pull away.
He said he felt caged.
He said he needed space.
He said he was overwhelmed.
I didn't understand.
How could my love feel like pressure?
How could wanting someone too deeply scare them away?
I begged. I cried. I made promises I shouldn't have needed to make.
But he left.Just like all the others.
Only this time, it hurt differently.
Because this time, I believed.
And what's worse? He left me right before my board exams—when the weight of the world was already crushing my chest.
I would stay up all night studying through swollen eyes.
One hand holding my pen.
The other wiping tears that wouldn't stop.
Fighting to stay focused while my heart kept whispering, Why wasn't I enough for him to stay?
But no answer ever came.