Young Love

"So there was this guy..."

I feel like that's how it always starts. Throughout your life there are a lot of guys. Friends, crushes, boyfriends...

The first boy I ever said "I love you" to (besides family. duh.), is currently serving an LDS mission in South Carolina. We met while I was still in high school and he was my first official boyfriend. We dated for 8 months before he left on his two-year mission, and a lot happened in those months. I can absolutely say that I fell in love with him. With him, his friends, his family... We became best friends and it broke my heart to say goodbye to him. After he left, I became very depressed and withdrawn. It was sad and unhealthy and I hated it. I cried all the time and it sucked. He was devoting TWO YEARS of his life to the Lord and I wasn't doing much to contribute to... anything. He and I wrote letter after letter and email after email. I found that I loved him even more after getting to know him better from afar and seeing him work through faith and the Lord. We talked all the time about how we were going to get married in the Salt Lake temple when he got home, and all about our plans for the future and a family.

I was 18 years old.

I had no clue what I was doing. He had asked me to date other guys while he was gone, but going out with other guys while planning a temple marriage with your missionary is incredibly unfair to everyone involved. And it sucked. Maybe even more than that depression when he first left. It was hard for me to open up to any guy and when I did, I felt guilty and dirty. It started to take it's toll on the relationship I had with my missionary and his family as well. We talked less and less, and eventually stopped writing letters all together.

I began to realize that although he was my best friend and I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone before, that LOVE changes. Your first love is not always your true love and it's not always meant to be. I don't know if love ever goes away, because I'm still very young and still care about him... just not in the way I did when I was 18. I'm not sure what will happen when he gets home, but I'm okay with not knowing. I've always tried to plan my life out exactly and precisely to the letter, but love is something that can't be planned, and if you try to control it or force it in any way, it becomes unhealthy and toxic and begins to look and feel less and less like the love you started with.