Written By : Alicia Chiang

I won’t forget my first love. He was quite something. For the first time ever, I knew what it felt like to have butterflies in my stomach. The first time I fell asleep to the sound of someone’s voice. The first time I talked on the phone till sunrise without realizing the number of hours that had passed. The first time I felt like nothing else mattered as long as I was with that person. The first time I felt like I was in love.

But for the first time ever, I also knew what it was like to lose someone. To cry so hard I found myself gasping for air, completely helpless and at a loss, wondering why I once thought that the people on TV were being overly dramatic whenever they suffered heartbreak.

Your first love is pure and raw, but difficult.

You see, young love is special. Maybe it is because our hearts were so innocent and pure, and our minds naive and oblivious. But that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? Everything was exactly what we expected from the fairy tales we listened to before bedtime as kids, maybe even more.

We’re 16 years old and we think you know what love is. Our parents would tell us that it was just puppy love, and we were convinced they were wrong.

Then happiness quickly turns to sorrow as fights became more common— we experience jealousy, anger, and hurt every single day as we hurl harsh words at each other mindlessly. We hurt like we have never hurt before. Then we go our separate ways because we just can’t seem to reconcile our differences. We enter different phases in life, and we were simply too young to understand what was happening.

But despite all the heartache, our first love is the only person who has ever received all of us— before we got stripped thinner with every heartbreak that subsequently came along. Our first love was everything we thought love was or should be, but they are also everything that was eventually proven wrong.

And our first love is the person we will never truly get over, someone who will always hold a special place in our hearts, even as we go on to love someone else.

First love is idealistic, subsequent love is realistic.

Subsequent love is different. It is less pretentious and more rational. Suddenly, everything makes more sense. With age comes maturity, and that probably plays a part, but so does experience.

Subsequent love makes us feel like all the heartache we went through had a reason. It makes us a stronger person, and teach us how to deal with the issues that every relationship would face. So we now know how to handle things better. We would know that love is not all smiles and laughter or cuddling in bed, but more mutual understanding, communication, and commitment.

Subsequent love is beautiful, because you realize that someone else can make you love again when you thought you’ve become numb and unfeeling. And if you find that person who accepts all of you — your skepticism, your cynicism towards romance, and your wounded soul — and loves you anyway, you know that that person is a keeper.

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