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From Me to You

Let me tell you about the first boy I have ever loved.

By Michelle LuiPublished 6 years ago 7 min read
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Love.

How do you discuss a topic on an extremely vague, controversial and bitter-sweet feeling? It’s four letters, one word, minuscule almost—however, it’s one of the most overrated and underrated experiences someone goes through at least once in their lifetime. Everyone has different perceptions of love and they all go through it very differently in several ways. Whether you’re still in love, whether it ended badly or faded into nothing, whether you’re experiencing something unrequited, it’s an experience we all find ourselves lost and inevitably invested in for a long time.

We’ve all heard, watched, and read about love and they all either seem cliché, unattainable, completely ridiculous or maybe even hopeful. We have our own stories and each are very unique but we tend to keep these details to ourselves. It’s almost as if we retell these stories, we feel that the last bit of love we have left in us may slip through our fingers and never come back. That will only happen if you let it.

I’ve never been one to talk about my experiences with love, but I did indulge in posting on social media of my prior relationship from time to time and gushed about it in my journals, just like a love-stricken teenager would. A quite conventional high school sweetheart love story, but there is so much more to it than meets the eye. It’s a story that requires a lot of closure and an ear to listen to its jumbled mess. That’s why I’m writing this to you. You may have heard different versions of our story, whether from him or through the grapevine, but this is mine.

Let me tell you about the first boy I have ever loved.

He and I never really talked until a friend of mine asked him for advice to go about expressing his feelings for me and possibly ensue a relationship. The whole scenario backfired and I fell for him instead. Damn, I fell hard for those blue eyes of his, too.

It was an extremely cold day in December ’09 and I remember that we clutched onto each other for warmth at a bus stop a little past the train tracks outside of our neighbourhood. We could see our breath passing through the little space we had between us and we joked about smoking and talked about the little things in life, keeping ourselves warm with laughter as we froze our nips off waiting for the bus in the snow.

I didn’t know if my cheeks were red from the cold or from him. And my cheeks never turn red unless I’m inebriated. I just remembered that all I wanted to do was to be close to him, no matter how small the gesture or plans were. I think I loved him before I even realized I was capable of loving someone.

We were two completely different people—almost polar opposites of each other, but somehow we gravitated towards each other, despite the circumstances.

We were like complementary colours, directly opposite of each other on the colour wheel. He was green and I was red and somewhere amongst the mess we made of mixing with each other, we found love. (FYI: Green and red do not mix well nor does the mixture make a pretty colour. It makes an ugly brown.) Yet, the two colours, together, somehow complement each other, especially during the holidays. You know that feeling you get during Christmas time? The unexplainable happiness, nostalgia, love, and excitement? It felt like that every time I was with him. I was happy. I was so, so happy.

Green has always been associated with "go," the forest, nature, and peacefulness. It’s a positive colour and it resonated well as red’s complementary colour. However, red has always been associated with ‘stop’, warning, blood, and anger. It’s a negative colour and somehow, even though I was red, I still managed to reel someone who was green towards me.

People were drawn to him. Me, not so much. Somehow, he was drawn to me and taught me how to love unconditionally and he loved me unconditionally. I was very hard to love and be with, but he stayed. He stayed with me for five years.

He and I both grew up together during those five years, and little did we know, we slowly started growing apart as we became adults. I changed almost completely. With everything that happened to me during that time, I’m still surprised he wanted to be with me through all that.

I spent every Christmas, Easter, Canada Day, birthday (even his siblings' and parents’ birthdays), and any holiday you could think of, with him and his family. I was so invested and in love with him and his family that we became a family. I never once questioned my love for them (To this day, I’ll always love them and care about them, even if they hate me now). I couldn’t even imagine a life without him and his family until my colour started changing. From red, to blue, to purple, to a colour that has a fucked up name—a colour that no longer resonated with green. His colour never wavered once because he just grew into a more deeper shade of green.

That’s how I wanted to grow: stable and confident in the colour I radiated. I was incapable of that because I was constantly unsure and in doubt about everything. I never really knew who I was when I was with him. All I knew was that I loved him and wanted to be with him, so I put my entire heart, soul and being into our relationship to the point that I completely forgot who I was, as an individual; as a human being. I became a lifeless, lost soul that only knew how to love him, but not myself. How could I love someone I barely knew?

Towards the last year of our relationship, I noticed how corrupted our communication with each other became. We talked at each other, but not with each other. We would bottle everything up and it would fill up until it exploded, making the mess even harder to fix. Insecurities became prominent and we started to be more distant, even if we spent 90 percent of our time together. We started to be unappreciative of each other. We took each other for granted. We hurt each other, but we never talked about it. We pretended everything was okay, right until the end. It was too late at that point. Our colours no longer resonated.

Our love seemed beautifully flawless before all that. Almost like a '90s television show. We were definitely not Cory and Topanga from Boy Meets World, but fuck, we were pretty damn close. I wanted to marry him and at some point, I know he wanted to marry me, too.

Not all beautiful things have a happy ending. Not all relationships are guaranteed a forever. Not all first loves will be your last, but it will be the last time you will feel everything like this for the first time. We always told each other that we would love each other forever, but it doesn’t mean that we would be together forever. In this time of our lives, being together, and pardon my lack of knowledge of math, is just like geometry. We are like two perpendicular lines—crossing each other at one point of our lives, but possibly never again. I’m grateful that we were never two parallel lines with one another, because I wouldn’t be the person I am today if we never crossed.

Our story could be an entire novel, but not everyone needs to know the intricate details of our little story. He was once mine and I was once his and we loved each other until the universe decided it was time for us to be apart so we could find the strength to finally love our own selves, as separate beings.

He will always hold a special place in my heart and I hope I do for him as well.

Thank you for everything, blue. Thank you for being unapologetically yourself when you were with me. You taught me so much about myself and about life that I never knew until I met you.

I really hope you and your family are doing well. Please, take care. We’ll see each other again one day.

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About the Creator

Michelle Lui

Writer and artist by moonlight, procrastinator and cigarette/coffee fueled Canadian by daylight.

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