I'd best tidy up my head; Day Two

Day 02 – Your first love

I have had some very intense relationships in my life. I have an addictive personality, and I tend to fall in love with certain things that I know in my right mind I can never have. I once wrote a letter to Michael Jackson, professing my love to him and asking him if I could have an autographed photo, because that would somehow show that he loved me too.

I fell in love with Taylor Hanson at the ripe age of 14. When you decorate your bedroom walls (and ceilings and doors and blinds) with someone's face, that is obviously true love.

I loved a few boys through high school. Most of these, looking back, were more out of my desire to have attention from men than actually being in love. One was my best friend, and I mistook that for something else. One only wanted my attention when he didn't get attention from anyone else.

It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I finally was able to say that I had not only fallen in love, but it was reciprocated.

BJ and I met through mutual friends, and I was the one who kissed him first.

He was beautiful, and personable. My family and my friends liked him. He was loud in a way I wasn't, good at working with his hands in a way I'm not, and more than anything else he made me feel alive.

I was a different person back then, and I was more concerned with what he wanted me to be than what I wanted for myself. I chose to stay in town for college, for him. Our relationship went south shortly after graduation. We were both extremely jealous people, and we would pick at old scars until the wound was gaping open waiting for salt to be thrown in. I would hang out with other boys that he didn't trust. He wouldn't answer his phone when he was supposed to be available.

The last couple of weeks of our relationship, and all we did was fight.

He ended it, a week after his birthday, summer of 2001. I was devastated.

I smashed all of the blue bottles he had given me, held his class ring hostage, would call him at random hours crying hysterically. The night of our breakup and he slept with one of my good friends. Things were never the same after that.

Over the last ten years, BJ (who goes by Brandon now) and I have managed to rebuild our friendship from the ground up. He was there for me through my entire pregnancy, and was actually the first person other than my family to meet Aiden. He sat in the delivery room with me after I had given birth and watched me eat my french toast while the epidural wore off.

He's married with two little girls who are the spitting image of him. To this day, he is still one of the people who knows me the best.

Through him I have discovered that sometimes, the person we wanted them to be, they already are. We just have to let them go, and let them shine alone for that person to come true.