Sabrina Espinosa

Falling in Love When You're 'Too Young'

*(Names have been changed for privacy) When I was in grade 9 I fell into my first real relationship. I'm not counting the previous occurrences in which I would date the same boy for a week whenever he felt like it. I'm counting my first real relationship, like the one where I didn't get dumped a week later. It started because I became really good friends with this boy named Carter* and we would always hang out at this afterschool program that was five minutes away from my school. We went to different schools which weren't particularly close or particularly far from each other, but still it was sometimes a hassle to meet. When I met him he had been very happy, he was doing chalk drawings on our sidewalk with me and we listened to music because we felt too old to do the activities inside, plus it was spring so why not? That day I thought I understood his personality, but it wasn't until we delved into the friendship further that I realized I was in fact, wrong. 15-year-old me was an undiagnosed ball of depression and anxiety. I had the terrible habit of hurting myself over little things because I was really sensitive and my friends often weren't. To speed this up, I learned through exchanging messages that he was the same, except he didn't have anxiety, he was just very depressed and suicidal. Even as a 15-year-old I was drawn to mental illness. I found it interesting because how can the human brain make us this way? To this day it still fascinates me and I've taken Psychology classes to learn more about it. Anyways, I soon realized I was developing a big fat crush on the sad boy.