For as long as I could remember, I have always been a hopeless romantic. I have had crushes on boys since kindergarten - some just harmless crushes, but most just playful. None of which stemmed from insecureness nor to raise my self confidence… I was just naturally attuned to what I wanted in a potential lover. From a young age, I (thought) that I always kind of known what I liked about a guy. I was confident in knowing all the bits and details that I dreamt of within a relationship. Or… so I thought.
Fast forward to High School. I got a boyfriend. The thing about me is that a lot of these crushes form around the premise prior to that of distance and a ground of integrity knowing who I am. So, (naively) going into this relationship I thought it would be like my prior crushes growing up. Fleeting and playful - nothing serious. But… I was so wrong. I ended up dating the guy for 4 years all throughout my High School (my very precious formative) years.
I look back so incredibly fondly to my High School years - not necessarily in the sense of the nostalgia… but more of what those memories invoked. My feelings.
Looking back to those 4 years - I had a lot to learn about myself. My way of thinking, untangled emotions I haven’t explored (trauma HA), and my self-image. And a part of that - I was also suppose to hold and take up mental space for someone who was trying to do the same?! Ridiculous if you ask me. In ways, it was selfish yet selfless at the same time. I was so naive to think that I could care for someone while simultaneously still trying to learn so much of myself.
The thing about dating so young, especially throughout my teenage years, is that I miss the naivety. I don’t think I could ever come as close to viewing love through the lens I did as a teenager, and in some ways, I genuinely mourn that. In another way, it’s beautiful. Perhaps it was a combination of the incredibly high highs and painfully low lows of my emotions during that period, but everything felt grander than it probably was.
There was something beautiful about being that naive. It gave me a glimpse into love where bending over backwards for someone felt romantic, even when it didn’t necessarily mean the relationship was growing with you. I think that’s what I miss most - not necessarily the person or even the relationship, but the version of myself who believed so wholeheartedly that loving someone deeply was enough to make it work.
3 years past that relationship right now - I can confirm that I am glad that it ended. Not in the sense, that it didn’t work out. Of course there is (somewhat) of a bittersweet sadness to that… but in the sense that I have learned so much more of myself and how to care for someone in my next relationship. I got insight knowledge of the messiness of dating at such a young age; and honestly I am glad it was that messy, true and raw.
Had I felt those emotions in my current relationship, I think they would have completely encapsulated me. Still, I’m grateful to have experienced such a profound naivety toward love at such a young - and perhaps fitting - developmental age.
Yet I’ve come to believe that the years between 13 and 25 are some of the most transformative of our lives: years meant for experimentation, exploration, and, most importantly, knowing thyself. In that sense, I wonder if placing so much of the spotlight on a romantic relationship so early in those formative years can be counterintuitive to turning that same light inward.
Instead of asking who I am, I was often asking who I was to someone else. And in doing so, I was given glimpses of my faults, tendencies, patterns, and strengths - but through the reflection of a relationship, rather than through the quiet process of discovering them for myself.
This is what I know holds true for this breakup in my life, and what I will continue to tell anyone going through something similar:
One day, it won’t hurt as badly anymore. The pain fades. One day, you will feel indifferent. Not sad, not happy, nor angry anymore. Just indifferent. And somehow, that indifference overtakes the pain and leaves you with the quiet knowledge of a new perspective on the experience.
And then, one day, you’ll wake up and think:
“Thank GOD it didn’t work out. I thought I wanted it to.”
And maybe that’s the real closure - not that you stopped loving them, or that it suddenly stopped mattering, but that you finally understand why it had to end.
All my love,
Brejette Nepa