I lost myself without even realising. For so many years I lived thinking that this was normal, because for me it was. But now I know how wrong I was, so here’s my story…
Have you heard the theory that (average) we all fall in love with three different people during our lifetime, each person bringing something different but equally important into your life. So far I’ve had two and currently I am in the progress of closing the door on the second one.
My first boyfriend I met when I was 17. In the previous years I did date, as much as a teenager dates, but none of it was significant. Getting boys’ attention was more of a quest, something exciting and something to talk about with my friends, rather than anything else. I was young and foolish and I didn’t know what life was about. I wasn’t worried about the future, I didn’t dwell on the past, I just lived in the moment and did whatever the hell I felt like doing. I was pretty damn free and in all honesty I don’t think I learnt a great deal back then. I met my first significant boyfriend during a Christmas Ball, I liked him pretty much instantly, although I still had the mindset that love is just an exciting quest. I liked the attention and the excitement but I’ve always been a bit awkward as soon as relationship was on the table. I just couldn’t handle the pressure, that it all had to be, or more specifically look perfect. I liked him though and he reciprocated my feelings and soon we were in love and I fast forward a few months, I lost my virginity to him. He was very loving, kind, a proper artist and I he put up with my outbursts. Around the same time my parents moved thousands of miles away and I was left alone and that was the time, I think, when I started to lose myself. Up until then I always depended on my mother more than anyone. After that I was entirely dependent on my then boyfriend and my circle of friends and I had no idea. In hindsight, I lost a big chunk of me. I’ve been told I matured a fair amount during the years when I had to take care of myself in the absence of my family. No child ever expects to go through this. My boyfriend was always there for me, he was incredibly supportive, but I was still a child, I didn’t understand what relationships are about (actually, I am only just starting to get that and I’m twenty-fucking-seven years old….go figure..), for me it was all a game, I had an idea of what it should be like, romance, butterflies, roses, him opening doors for me and all that chivalry bullshit and that was all I saw, the packaging. I didn’t see the contents, the substance, I didn’t see what really mattered. We were together for two years and not once did I open my fucking eyes to see what was in front of me. Then we broke up in 2010 and he was angry and I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I’d already had sex with someone else while we were broken up for a week…so yeah, I was pretty fucking terrible. But I learnt from this relationship. I eventually opened my eyes and looked back at it and saw all the terrible mistakes I made, my unacceptable behaviour, me being jealous of his friends and not having a relationship with his family properly. I took the next three years, while I was completing my bachelor’s degree, to learn from and get over that relation ship. Now, ten years later we’re friends. I’ve apologised to him a lot for being a horrendous girlfriend, I still do occasionally when we talk, I do feel terrible about the way I treated him back then. He’s lovely though, he isn’t angry, we are friends and I wish him all the best, from the very bottom of my heart.