Love Lessons : 1 & 4

Part 1 - First Love

I think many people confuse their first love, with being their true love. In my case, there is 10 year difference in my age between the two. When you're young, and you first fall in love, you don't know what do with yourself. You loose all control. My first boyfriend was my friend's cousin. He was 3 1/2 years older than us and I would go to her house every day just to see him. We talked for 4 months before we even started dating, which is good, because I like to take things slow. Everything was so fresh and new and exciting. We didn't have money to go out and do things, there were school dances, and parties. We went ice skating every Saturday, it was only $8 then, lord only knows how much it costs now. We went to the movies, only $3.75 per ticket. We just wanted to spend time together. It was cute, innocent love. I remember when we first held hands, I was so nervous. But all of those good and new feelings can be confusing when you're young. I didn't even know what love was.


But all I knew was that I wanted to be on the phone with him and talk to him if I couldn't see him. He was dealing with things in his home life, that was far beyond my current level of maturity. Both of his parents were raging alcoholics. His father abused his mother, so she left him. His father would verbally abuse him, I don't know if he ever laid hands on him, but I know that when he was in one of his drunken fits he would yell at him for no reason. When you're young and in love, you don't see things like that. You don't realize the pain another person is going to. I call the first love, a selfish love. At least for me it was. I didn't fully love my self yet, how could I, I was only 14. We dated for almost 2 years. His family moved him to Idaho, to stay with his other aunt and to finish high school.


Long distance for 2 months worked out alright, or at least I thought it did. When he came back, he broke up with me. He told me that he was no longer in love with me, and that it was time for him to start taking care of himself. See, he had taken care of his father and his family this whole time. He was not in the position to take care of me too. He graduated high school in Idaho, moved back, and got an apartment with his cousins. Of course I didn't understand, ugh, and I did the most embarrassing thing possible. Something I advise no women to ever do. I walked to the park where he was playing basketball with his friends, and sat there and cried. I looked like such a fool. Such an idiot. But that is the price you pay for love sometimes. I don't think I have ever been that heartbroken before. My heart was still weak then, still new to love then. I cried for a month straight. I think I was an outlet for him. He needed some escape from his personal life, and I was there..for 2 years. But when he moved away, and got his head cleared and looked inside himself, he realized that he didn't need me anymore. Which is fine, I helped him through some difficult times. My mother would make him dinner, because he couldn't get it at home. I was apart of his life to be there when he cried and when he couldn't stand being at home or with his family constantly nagging. The perfect escape route.


And whenever I wanted to hang out with my friend, he would be there. Talk about stabbing yourself in the eye. He started dating some old girls from his college, and I would just talk to random guys and that was it. I realize now that we could have never worked out. Not only were we too young to declare ourselves to one another, but we didn't have a full understanding of life. Love swings one way, but life comes through and blows it the other way.


From that relationship, I learned to be unselfish in my love. I learned that I can't just think about myself all the time, and that I had to consider what other people were going through. When he broke up with me, all I could think about was myself. How could he do that to me? Forget that fact that he was struggling with himself to become a man, to step up to the plate, and take care of his family. Last I heard about him, is that he is married and has a family.


Part 4 - The Soulmate

The soul oh the soul....how can someone define it. Is it just there in our minds, to make us feel better about life? The soul, according to many religious beliefs, is the self-aware essence, or consciousness, unique to a particular living being, defined as one being independent of the substance and that it survives the death of the body. The soul has no true substance or being.


Other philosophies say that there is no such thing as a soul, and that it is made up to further classify someone. Somehow this theory of a soulmate came about, and there are many reasons and beliefs behind it. There is a myth that people originally had four legs, four arms and two heads, but Zeus divided that person, leaving their souls to search for their "other half" Another theory that I read, is that God created androgynous souls, equally male and female. The souls split into separate genders later, perhaps because they incurred karma while playing around on the earth, or "separation from God". Over countless reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse back together and return to the ultimate.


I don't know if the term soulmate is correct, but I think that # 4 and I were destined to be together. After the abusive relationship, I had to find love in myself as well as strength. All of the men I met up until that point, were weaker, at least in my eyes. So while on vacation in the Dominican Republic, completely oblivious from the world around me, I met him. Neither one of us were supposed to be on that trip. He was supposed to go in February, but couldn't, so instead he came later with his family. And I was supposed to go to Aruba, but couldn't because I was started school in the fall. I was fresh from a relationship, wounded, hurt and of course the most hated term for females...vulnerable. What did you think would happen? I meet a man, who is not only strong physically, but mentally. He was secure with himself, and I hadn't reached that point in my life yet.


I was 18 and he was 25. I like to blame my aunt for pushing us together, but I know that there was a strong attraction from the beginning. We only had 3 days to spend together, because we met on a Wednesday, and our flights went back on that Saturday. I figured that it would be a once and a lifetime thing. I have met guys on vacation before, and it never developed in to anything. But when I got home and checked my emails, he already sent me a message.


The only problem with us being able to see each other again, was about 3,000 miles of distance. He lived in New York, I'm here in Cali. He came out to visit me that Labor Day weekend, and we started dating. 6 months of a long distance relationship, where we only saw each other maybe 4 or 5 times. And then he moved out here. My friends thought that he was crazy. They thought I was dealing with another psycho boyfriend. But things were a lot different. I was in college, and he had already finished school. We didn't have any petty bullshit to deal with, from people talking at our schools. Everything seemed to happen so fast, that now I turn around and we are only a week or so away from our 6 year anniversary.


I don't even know if I can describe our love to people, because we are so connected in different ways. We are not perfect, by far, we are completely opposite in every way possible. Completely opposite. Our love of music, connects us, our feelings about other people are different but they connect us. Our feelings for each other, are the strongest that one could have.


So how could I have grown? I learned to love myself in this relationship, more than the others, because I had someone who loved me for me. He unselfishly gave his heart to me, and accepts me for who I am. I've had to grow and mature not only in college, but with him. I know people think that you can loose yourself while being with someone else, but I don't think I lost myself. I had to look deep inside to find who I am. And I am still a different person than he is. In my past relationship I lost connection with the outside world, and in this relationship I chose to loose connection for a while.


Being saturated with the outside world is both healthy and unhealthy. You can't find love in a room full of people. Your soulmate is not lurking in bars, night clubs or even street corners. Your true soulmate is yourself. Reach all the way down, in to the inner depths of yourself and you will find it. Because my self esteem was shot to hell from the previous relationships, I would stare in the mirror to accept myself. And now I can't stop staring. I love myself, with or without my current boyfriend. But he loves me too. And I love him. I had to help him love himself to. Our love not only comforted us, but repaired some wounds we've been licking for quite awhile.


So why all of this? Why am I going so far to get my lessons out there? I think because in the end you start thinking about the beginning. It is the end, of my love in the relationship sense, because I am going to marry this person. But my love will continue to evolve, as i have children, as I write more and have books published, those will become my loves too. As we embark on business adventures and investments together, my love will continue to grow. The sky is the limit on love. And i want people to know that I am not just some silly girl in a relationship that is not going anywhere. And although people are pressuring us to get married, and have some phenomenal wedding, we have other goals and plans in mind for the moment. You only live once, and you only can love yourself once.


Do I recommend stop searching for love? Not everyone can be as successful in relationship lessons...but I say if you can learn a lesson, and not repeat it then you are the most brilliant person alive. And I do think of myself as being pretty brilliant.

MUAH!