First Love and Best Friend

Picture this: a 16 year old girl, halfway through high school, finds out her boyfriend had been cheating on her, so inevitably they break up. Yeah, that was me. Worst day ever. Or so I thought...

Late May had finally come, and the school year was close to an end, but for us band kids, it was just the beginning. It was my job to welcome the incoming freshman, but I was not in my regular cheerful mood.

See, my boyfriend at the time and I had just broken up, and I thought my life was over (over dramatic high school teenager...check!). Little did I know that I was about to meet my first love.

After ushering in most of the newbies, and a lot of, “ Hi, nice to meet you’s,” I needed to take a breather. Suddenly another newbie walks through the doors and something came over me. I marched right over to him and said, “Hi! We’re going to be best friends.” (Yup, those were my first words to this dude who ended up being my best friend and first love, but whatever right.)

I’m pretty sure he thought I was crazy, but fast forward a few weeks later and we had become best friends! Needless to say we were always together, practically attached at the hip, and constantly laughing about something; and of course as time went on I started to fall for him.

Everyone thought that him and I were “together,” and even though that’s what I wanted, we constantly had to reassure everyone that we were just friends. Honestly, things seemed perfect, but of course that couldn’t last because there is no such thing as a good love story without some drama.

“Uh, who is she?”

“Oh yeah, right, uh this is my girlfriend.”

And just like that my world shattered. Eventually they had broken up, but the timing between the two of us never matched up. However there was one time where our friends wouldn’t let us out of a room until I told him how I felt.

Needless to say that didn’t pan out too well, and I ended up taking off. After that moment there were just countless times where I would catch myself having to hold back my actions because I couldn’t let him know how I still felt.

A year later, and I still had the same feelings. He wasn’t making it easy to move past him either. The constant phone calls at night, hanging out every day after school, always being together and just laughing at everything. I was so ready to graduate, and move away just to get some space and hopefully meet someone new and get over him.

Graduation had finally came around, and I was hopeful that things would change(meaning my feelings) and we could just be best friends and all would be well in the world, but of course that isn’t what happened. That would be way too easy!

I found myself comparing him to every other guy I would talk to, and honestly it was horrible. He was the person I’d go to when anything happened; no matter if it was amazing news, terrible news, or just to talk about my day. At this point it had been three years of feelings for the same guy, and I was just over it!

I felt like it was holding me back from meeting tons of different people and giving them, and myself, the chance to broaden my horizons.

Finally, I stopped talking to him all the time, and that’s when I really started to open myself up to making a bunch of new friends, all with different perspectives of the world. I even met a new guy who I really started to like, but that’s a different story.

Now I know that my best friend, and first love will always be with me, even if we don’t speak. Do I still think about him? Well duh! I wouldn’t have written this if I didn’t, but it isn’t in the same longing desperate way I used to. He is still, in fact, my best friend to this very day!

Yes, I reminisce about the past and what could have been between us, but I’m not putting my love life on hold for him anymore. I’m exploring who I am and learning new things, and besides we still fill each other in on our lives from time to time.

Who knows what the future holds anyway? We could end up together and give this ridiculous story an epic movie ending.