“Now I’m speechless, over the edge
I’m just breathless
I never thought that I’d catch this love bug again.
Hopeless, head over heels in the moment
I never thought that I’d get hit by this love bug again.”
Love is one of those topics that can either be a really great thing to talk about, or a really complicated thing. I’m glad that the topic of love is a rather easy one to speak about, and thank God my story isn’t so heartwrenching.
Love is definitely one of those things that can’t be properly put in words. It’s one of those things you can’t explain, because it’s different for everyone. Being “in love” is definitely different for everyone too. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t discuss love ONE WEEK before the loveliest day of the year comes around! So, lemme try to at least explain the topic of love.
They say that a person falls in love three times in their lifetime. First love is newfound, puppy naive love, the second love is the forbidden, toxic love that teaches you a lesson, and the third love is the one you never saw coming because the first two times you were blindsided by the idea of love.
My third love happens to also be my first love.
Lemme explain.
I met my first love when I was 15 years old. I was a sophomore in high-school, minding my own business, when BAM! This cute-looking senior boy walked into my vocal class with his friends, and sat in the back of the room. When I say it was love at first sight, it was more like love at second sight because this boy was also in my Physics class earlier on in the day. This boy just felt different from the other boys; he wasn’t as tall as the others, he wasn’t as crazy as the other ones, and he had a style that attracted my emo scene punk Converse wearing self. Over the months we grown closer and I started to really fall for him, and the rest is history.
Just like anyone else, we had our extreme lows at one point. Though my depression stage, I started getting involved with other people who weren’t healthy for me; that’s where the second love comes in. We started to get involved with other people because we were just in this really awkward situation where we got other people into the equation, and on my side of it, everything went downhill. In hopes of wanting to feel self-love by seeking it out through other people who clearly didn’t give a shit about me, I kept hurting everyone around me, including him. But he somehow always stayed. I’d hurt him, lie to him, treat him like shit because of my own selfish reasons, and he never truly left my side. To this day, I wonder what made him stay after all that happened. I wanted to be not only better for me, but better for him so that I can properly thank him for all that he did for me when no one else was around.
By the time I was in college, I had no friends but him. He was the only person I really had, which was okay with me because he was truly my best friend. I told him everything, I laughed, cried, grew up with him. He was someone I spent most of my time being myself with and life was simply… good with him in it.
Slowly but surely, I started to fall all over again for him. I was afraid to admit it though.
When I was younger, I prematurely told him I loved him while doing things that said opposite. But even being sure years later, I was still skeptical of getting my heart-broken again and the wall around my heart stayed up. I was afraid to express my admiration for him because I didn’t want to let him know I’ve completely fallen head over heels for him, but I also didn’t want to scare him away.
After months going back and forth with this, I had a conversation with my friend Tori, ironically on her 22nd birthday about this. I remember sitting on her couch at one in the morning, now crying my eyes out, because I couldn’t express in words how I felt (I was also just very emotional that night). After hearing what I had to say, she simply told me the story about how she first told her current boyfriend that she loved him. After not realizing what she was trying to tell me in my situation, she straightforwardly said “You need to tell him how you feel. You gotta just tell him I love you.”
Now when I say I was scared shitless, I was scared shitless. I always kept my feelings on the back-burner because I felt like my feelings for him were a nuisance sometimes, so I always tried to keep it cool. At the end of the day, we are best friends, and my feelings for him made me forget that we are best friends before anything else. But when Tori had brought up this “I love you” mission for me to do “whenever I was ready”, the feelings were bubbling up inside me.
After weeks of nervous hangout dates and me listing out the pros and cons of telling him I loved him, I finally realized that this was the love I was always looking for. Love for me was his support when I went through my depression in 2012. It was him remembering the little things I once said in a conversation. It was him taking notice of the flaws in my body and turning them into things he admired. It was his companionship and passion and positive energy he put out to the world. It was his heart, loyalty, honesty, and unconditional love. It was the way he was good to me and for me. It was the way we both grew out of our younger selves and still feel like our 15 and 17 year old selves.
I wasn’t planning to tell him I loved him the day of our friendship anniversary. It was gonna feel too planned out, and I wanted it to come out as natural as possible; whenever I was ready.
A day after our 7 year anniversary, I said “I love you” to him.
There wasn’t anything special planned; it wasn’t said over a fancy, candlelight dinner. It wasn’t a poem that I recited or a moment in time where I played our song and confessed my love to him in a sonnet.
We were simply laying in bed, looking up towards the ceiling. I was nuzzled against his chest, and I began to feel the word vomit coming up. I felt like I was going to puke butterflies. I simply asked him if I can tell him something, and despite the fact he thought I was going to tell him I was pregnant (which killed the vibe for a slight second), I looked up at the ceiling, closed my eyes, and said something along the lines of
*deep breath* “You-don’t-need-to-respond-to-me-and-I’m-not-expecting-you-to-say-it-back-because-you-should-only-say-it-if-you’re-ready-and-I’m-ready-so-ima-say-it-and-oh-God-it’s-hot-in-here-is-the-AC-on-oh-man-anyway-besides-all-of-that-what-I-sorta-kinda-am-trying-to-say-is-well… I love you.”
And the rest is history.
We aren’t your traditional couple. We aren’t even a couple. I didn’t tell him that I loved him to become a couple. As of right now, we’re happy just being in each other’s company, doing what we do best: being simple with each other. Love doesn’t have to be confined in this non-existent box that is called “relationship”. We are lovey and cuddly like a couple, we protect each other like a couple, we have great sex like a couple, we call each other cute names like a couple, and soforth. I guess the one thing we don’t really do is showcase each other on social media, but even then that doesn’t mean anything relationship wise if you do or don’t. We’re private people; we are just us. If we ever end up being together, then this will be the story about a love that took years to be put together and we will live on with our lives. If we don’t, I will still be here to support him, his dreams, and be happy for his accomplishments in the future.
“So, you said ‘I love you’ to him, and you guys aren’t together? What was the point?” everyone said as they read this blog post. Haha.
I told him “I love you” because I don’t think there will ever be another day in my life that I don’t. And that’s what love truly is to me.
-Liz (:
Letters From Liz. 