Why I don’t (usually) write about love

Photo credit @Erin Deborah Waks

By Erin Deborah Waks

Before your change of heart

Before it all got dark

We were two young fools or kids in love

I’m still living there

(Kids in Love by P!nk and First Aid Kit)

I don’t usually write about love. 

My own experiences of love could hardly be considered love. I don’t have a single photograph of me holding hands with someone I love. No love letter, no magical story. What I do have, though, is the conviction that I have, at least once in my life, been in love. A memory that fizzled out with such an insignificant sigh I feel it’s impossible anyone would believe quite how significant - monumental, even - it felt to me.

The first time I fell in love was exactly how it is in all the songs. We were too young, too naive. Too much of my worth, my sanity, hung by the thread that was his feelings for me. There was so much at stake. And like so many first loves, it ended in the sort of heartbreak and trauma that is formative in one’s view on love.

So began an entirely predictable cycle. I would meet a guy, one I liked. Gently, at first, my feelings would grow. Then suddenly, as though a key fitting perfectly into its lock, it would become an obsession, infatuation. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve recounted this story to my friends.

While this sort of an infantilised love is full of imagination and magic and joy, it harbours a dangerous secret. In truth, it is merely a momentary dopamine hit, prolonged by the girl who finds it completely impossible to believe romantic love can be reciprocated.

The same girl who was traumatised, age 17, when her best friend stopped looking at her. When her first love changed his mind overnight, he toyed with more than just her heart. Instead of salvaging at the very least their friendship, he cut her out with barely a moment’s warning. He couldn’t even look at her. 

She wasn’t stupid, she knew boys were allowed to change their minds. What she minded, though, was going overnight from someone who was loved, worthy, beautiful, to someone who was unlovable, worthless, and repulsive. 

What he didn’t realise is that when he decided not to love her, she decided that meant she couldn’t be loved.

When he decided not to remind her of her worth, she decided that meant she was worthless.

When he decided not to look at her at all, she decided that meant that she was no longer beautiful. Perhaps never had been.

She’s older now - I’m older now. I won’t let a single person ever shake my belief in myself again. It’s cruel that some of our most difficult experiences in love happen when we’re not quite sure enough of ourselves to remember that one person not loving you does not make you unlovable. 

If only I’d realised back then I needed to do nothing to be loved, except to just let myself actually be loved. My first love broke that for me - but that doesn’t mean he was right.