I wonder what they’re doing right now…where they’re at, who they’re with and are they thinking of me? There is one thing I’ll never forget: my first.
Not my first boyfriend, first pet, nor my first home, but the first person I became intimate with—not only just sexually, but full-blown love.
Love is not a cop-out to get into a girl’s pants. No, love is that addictive feeling where you willingly lose control and the obsession becomes passionate and self-sacrificing. Where you allow yourself to fall, and accept the fact that there is no guarantee that the other will fall, as well.
Many confuse love with infatuation and lust, where carnality dominates the emotional, and platonic love is a convention of the past. Consumed by love, subtle touches drive me crazy, mental images burn and my desires need constant fulfillment.
However, my day-to-day life drives me crazy. I’m still young, at the “prime of my youth,” and always bouncing from relationship to relationship. Many of these failed attempts at monogamy are short-lived and lack any real passion or actual interest.
Why you may ask? Well, because I’m simply stuck in the past. Everywhere I go, I am constantly reminded of my first. Whether it’s a song I hear while wandering through the mall or hearing the cute little things and sayings that kept me blushing.
Somehow, I always manage to connect every situation to my first. I compare every new love interest to the last and subconsciously find something wrong to avoid getting hurt. Or, if I find the ideal, I always find a similar characteristic to my first and can’t suffer the constant reminders. Such a life is pathetic and painful, yet we all go through it sometime throughout our lives.
I remember my first guy; his name was “Chad,” and it was a one-night-stand. I was young, he was older and I always had a thing for athletes. I snuck out of my window at the wee hours of the night and jumped into his Ford Focus. Doesn’t that sound romantic?
Well, it’s safe to say I stopped talking to him after a while and found myself a new boyfriend. But as the years passed, and the boyfriends turned into temporary lovers, I still felt like my first time was nowhere near special.
Then right when I was about to give up, I met this girl at a club. She was beautiful, intelligent, athletic, funny and passionate (not that I have a checklist). She was a “friend of a friend” and ambiguous about her sexuality. Something I found endearing, might I add.
All my close friends know how I am around someone I like. I’m completely confident when I flirt with men, but around a pretty girl, I become a nervous wreck. In the presence of beauty, I become a bit passive. I stutter. I giggle like an idiot.
She, however, smiled, and we danced the night away. Body language was my safest form of communication because I was left speechless within her presence.
But it’s safe to say I found my new first time with her, and it was much better than “Chad.” And also I found a way to screw it up as usual and continued to mentally punish myself for the many mistakes I made.
The memories of that special night are everlasting, and I constantly see flashbacks that force me to constantly “what if” every possible scenario. Self-blame kept me from moving on, I couldn’t progress. A melancholic existence temporarily consumed my life, and I envied the life of her present lover. I either chose to be alone or fool around with someone in order to get over the pain, to get over my first(s).
Inevitably, a born-again virgin was just a silly thought, and I accepted that I could never really attain a new “first time,” but I could achieve an entirely special intimate relationship someday.
Even to this day, I still bottle up my feelings and won’t allow myself to indulge into the possibilities of future love interests. The boys I currently date lack any romance; I only see them at night, and regret still bombards my mind.
I guess I am just waiting to find someone that will make me forget my past, force me to live for the moment and when I’m with him or her, thoughts of my first will be almost nonexistent.
Honestly, you’ll never forget your first, but moving on is vital to life and a major stepping-stone towards happiness.
Like my good friend Emily says, you have to “live in the present.”
Narisa Imprasert can be reached at nimprasert@ut.edu.
[poll id=”3″]