First Love

Last night...my roommate was talking about the first time a girl hears that a guy loves her and cares about her...and how it stays with her...as she spoke, her voice took on a certain quality -it was personal, even though we were talking about another girl- and I knew what she meant and I think my other female roommate did too (I have no idea what my male roommate who was present was thinking...). I know a first love is special...and potentially so potent that it shapes you forever...at least that is what they say, right?

I have been in love with two people...I know how both experiences felt...and while they were similar in some ways...they were very different in others. But that makes me wonder if it is the first experience of love that shaped me...or if it was my first heartbreak. Is it really one's first heartbreak that influences one's perceptions about love? Love came easy the first time...and there were so many expectations of that relationship...some of which my roommate referenced when she spoke of first loves...you think it will be forever, you think no one could ever love you like this or that you could ever feel this again...you feel beautiful like never before...or for the first time...you feel special, like you matter...and you are so grateful for this person, this love, to have recognized it in you and rescued from the confines of your heretofore shriveled experience of adolescence. It makes you feel real, and part of the world, alive...grown-up.

I am not going to address the question of why we want to grow up and why we strive to live like our role-models or up to expectations, but I do want to address the feeling of being in love opposed to being out of love. When the person who was the first to hold you heart...decides to drop it and "accidentally" step all over it, perhaps while s/he says "it is not you, it is me" or "I just don't want a relationship right now" or any other variety of the worst news ever, you sink so much lower than you ever knew you could get. But I strongly believe we learn more from our suffering than from our moments of ecstasy.

Pain leads us to ask "why me?" or to believe the world as we know it is over or to begin to realize everything does not come easily or go our way. We experience pain like this from the moment we are born, but of course we process it in different ways...but love and meaning are so linked...that we continue to look for meaning through our loves and our relationships but do we find it there.

Someone told me that he was his own best friend and that any other person (including his wife) that ever came into his life was just a cherry on the top of an already delicious sundae (and none of you know this person, so do not ask). I would love to be my own best friend and be able to appreciate every moment with someone I like in this same way, but I do not think it can happen. I find meaning in a different way. I felt this person was actually not as liberated as he thought, because he is trying to live a life free from stressful thoughts and therefore there is an almost a sense of denial towards wanting anything in his life. He tries to prevent stressful thoughts from impeding his happiness, but if he would define the absence of something he wanted as stressful, wouldn't he cease to want? This borders on a religious notion of striving for acceptance of one's lot that I cannot deem more desirable than experiencing desire and embracing it and the pain it can bring. I think the pain we feel about the loss of something is the best indicator of how much joy we got out of it...it is like getting over a cold and being able to breathe again...it feels that much marvelous to breathe in...and breathe out...

I grow from the pain I experience and I risk feeling it again when I dare to open my heart to someone...the lessons I learned from my first love seem silly and juvenile to me now, but the tears I shed during that first breaking of my heart...oh my, are they ever the forces that have shaped the riverbed of my existence...and molded me as they desired...and all subsequent tears, sobs and sighs comprise the weather of my soul even as I search out the light from a new flame...