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.

Who had a girlfriend.

I stayed quiet about my feelings for about 3 months before I felt that what I was feeling was more than just "like-like"—even now I question if I was right, but back then I knew I had fallen in love.

I'd been in love before with a boy named *Riley, but it was very one-sided and he was often verbally and occasionally physically abusive, so really all that did was hurt me and make me question if I should ever tell Carter how I felt. I questioned myself for weeks and eventually when he and his girl had been dating for around three months I told him. I confessed that I believed I was in love. I told him I didn't expect him to do anything but I had to tell him because it was driving me crazy. Of course, this was all in a big paragraph over text at, like, 9 PM. He said he felt the same, I was shocked, I asked about the girlfriend, and he said he hadn't been as connected to her lately and he couldn't stop thinking about me. An hour later he decided to call the girl and gently break it off with her. She was sad but he was very gentle about it so she understood.

Funny enough, that relationship is—to this day—my longest one. Carter and I dated for almost 10 months. The only reason we broke up was because we were fighting almost every day and had to mutually agree that it couldn't go on.

I'm telling this story because,

1. I like writing

and 2. I feel like adults have it all wrong. Say what you like about me being a know-it-all teenager but truly that's how I feel, and I consider myself pretty responsible. I think that when adults say "you're too young to fall in love," they really just base that on the fact that they think all of us are more like Riley; date for a week then leave it. It really just depends on the people.

Now don't get me wrong, I've gone through two relationships since that one, one of which was a real one with a more grown-up Riley which lasted about 3 months and another with a boy named *Alex which went on for 6 months before he vanished and I had to state that we broke up. I've had my heart broken many times, and some people could say that that's a lot of relationships for a girl who's only 17, but I think that it's taught me to be more responsible and know the good ones from the bad ones.

So really, in my opinion, there's no such thing as falling in love when you're too young.