Young Love Is A Mistake — Don’t Lose Yourself In It

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“She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss the rest of your life.” – Junot Díaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Do not fall in love when you’re young because you’ll spend pivotal years wondering if leaving them was the right decision. Falling in love when you’re young doesn’t make you lose sight of your worth; on the contrary, you learn to see your beautiful self through the rose-tinted glasses of your significant other. You will love and respect yourself in ways that you didn’t think were possible. No one will teach you more about your worth than your first real love. Do not fall in love when you’re young because once they are gone, you’ll be left with a blurry vision and a damaged identity. Do not fall in love when you’re young not because you’ll identify yourself as a girlfriend or a boyfriend instead of an independent individual, but because you’ll be left as a hopeless wanderer, unable to choose where to go from here. There is nothing more beautiful than learning, growing, and finding yourself next to someone who cherishes you. You don’t push aside your personal problems because you’re focusing on them- you learn to stay on track with the gentle help of an extra pair of hands. However, once it’s over, the lack of guidance and reassurance will throw you off.

The temporary satisfaction that comes from knowing that you are part of the lucky ones that are able to experience, at such a young age, what most people spend their entire lives looking for doesn’t compensate for the permanent state of confusion and longing. There is life after the break up, but you’ll ultimately find yourself growing up backwards, differently. Your friends will long for something magical to lose themselves in, something they’ve never experienced before- you will long for what you’ve already had. You won’t fall in love with the idea of love like they will; you’ll just spend the next years of your life wondering if you’ll ever find something as powerful and beautiful. Instead of indulging in self-hatred triggered by the embarrassment and regret of a bad college hook up, you’ll long for the days when you were more than just a drunk stranger’s chance to get laid. Instead of sleeping in the comfort of your new unfamiliar bed, you’ll be suffocated by the solitude concealed within the thin layers of tousled white sheets. Instead of savoring the long-awaited return of the butterflies, you will wonder if they are the same exotic, fluttering creatures that once made it difficult for you to breathe and perhaps they have somehow evolved once again, as if hatching from a chrysalis wasn’t enough and this time they will bloom into something more exquisite and magnificent. You’ll wonder if they are mere infatuation butterflies, fluttering for the sake of fluttering, for the sake of feeling something. You will also wonder if they have felt them again, too.

Your young love will permanently mark you and set you apart from the rest, and not in a good way. In the way that non-frequent and frequent flyers are different: one confident and eager to fly, the other stripped of his innocence and naiveté.

You’ll always be too young, too full of life to have to experience loss at its cruelest state: relentlessly reaching out into vast darkness, holding on to false hope and fabricated dreams intricately woven into a worn out rope. At least when you lose someone for good, you are forced to turn a doorknob to face closure. When they are alive and breathing and growing and imprinting other people’s lives, you are stuck in an endless hallway of hopeful doors, each promising all the wonderful scenarios you’ve ever dreamed of, and you won’t be able to help but wonder if your key could grant you glorious access. You’ll never stop wondering.