The Velvet Type

You never ‘get over’ them, but you do learn how to live with them, as a part of you.

You’re 17 again, everything in the world seems so big, and it’s all so important. 

You have this innocence the first time you fall in love, whether it’s 15 or 21… All of a sudden, the world slows, and you can’t seem to breathe without this other person near. They become this hope, this path to your future, this all-consuming euphoria that you crave day in and day out. 

You don’t know any better, your heart leaps, and bounds until it can rest against what you’ve determined is its counterpart. 

I believe your first love teaches you the most. It’s being so young and inexperienced with life that when someone comes to claim your heart, you don’t second-guess it; there is no doubt, just a suffocating need to be near them. 

I fell in love at 16.

There seemed to be this constant pull towards him through previous years. My skin conducted electric current at his proximity; everything would buzz and come to life. My heart beat a little faster, my laughs were lighter, I craved to meet his eyes and pick around inside his head. 

There was this kind of innocence the first time we kissed, and fireworks stole my breath away. Our lips touched, and all of a sudden the world made sense, and I knew one thing for certain: I would do anything for another taste.

We are reckless in our first love, not caring who is in our way, only that we are determined to spend every waking second together before life gets too real, too big.

There is no rational thinking when it overtakes, only the ecstasy of spilling your deepest secrets, of learning each other’s bodies for the first time, of whispering through the night because you can’t stand to fall asleep without a simple ‘goodnight’. 

There’s endless media on first love, books, movies, and television shows. On how it could happen, what happens when it does, how it will feel.

But no one talks about what happens after. When you willingly hand over your bleeding heart and eventually realise he doesn’t know how to hold it gently.

How by loving recklessly, the aftermath leaves you tattered and bruised with bleeding wounds, you have no idea how to stitch back together. 

Why does no one tell you how absolutely devastating it is to experience that first betrayal? To be fighting for every breath because your tears begin to choke you. You scream and plead with the gods as you feel the physical crack ricochet through your chest.

You drown, and the person you thought was supposed to help you swim just watches. 

No one tells you how you’ll carry those scars forever. 

Sometimes you poke at them, prodding them like a child with a stick to see if they can still bleed. If what you experienced was ever real at all. If that love you felt will ever fade away, eventually become particles in the dust. 

The answer to that is no. One thing the media got right was how you’ll never forget your first love. You carry pieces of them that they left behind. There’s this before and after that seems to haunt you.

Before, you were wondrously in love, so willing, so reckless with your heart. You handed it over without hesitation, believing every word they said without question. It was pure, untouched by pain, soft and gentle, wrapping you in comfort, joy, and safety. There was no fear, only devotion.

After, you feel warped.

There is no going back to the person you were before. You’ve been marked, impaled by a poison with no antidote. The pain is a physical beast, scratching and clawing its way through your heart. A heart that never heals the same. 

Time passes, and eventually you begin to see the cracks. You notice the things everyone tried to warn you about. You realise it wasn’t all softness and light.

And sometimes, when you drink too much, it’s like reopening a door you thought had been sealed. The memories rush back in, and the pain ricochets through you again and again.

Your wounds follow you in new connections. You notice the unwarranted changes in yourself.

Through all your pain, you were building.

Each tear shed, each crack in your heart, resulted in these bricks. They slowly stack themselves, one atop the other, then come iron bars, cold and unforgiving, and all of a sudden, your heart is hidden away from prying eyes. Safe and protected within your own fortress. 

You find yourself functioning again, put back together with whatever scraps you could get your hands on, but something’s… different.

Your willingness to trust is gone, and your want for love is nonexistent. It’s like everything that once made you who you are is now either buried beneath the rubble of the disaster or drifted off, carried by the wind. 

Someone took a fire extinguisher to your burning heart. 

It alters every bit of your DNA; you’ll reminisce on how his hands felt against your skin, how his breath fanned across your face, how his arms felt holding you, as if the entire universe existed in that singular moment.

But he’s not here anymore, and you’ll never love like that again. 

Maybe you’ll deny it ever was love, maybe it was delusion, infatuation, validation… You search and scour the internet for reasons, for explanations and yet, nothing is ever satisfactory. 

Your first love is a catalyst. It alters you entirely in ways you can’t even fathom until it happens. Until you let your young, pure heart of fire loose for the first time without a second thought of the consequences. 

More time passes, and you find yourself accepting what was and what never will be. But what you discover to be missing the most isn’t the person; it has nothing to do with them.

It’s about you.

You find that you will forever envy your younger self for loving without restraint. For letting her flames surge and devour freely, utterly unafraid. 

I loved someone else after him. It was entirely its own wildfire. But the first one always lingers, haunting you at times, completely unanticipated. 

6 years later, and here I am, writing about my first love.

I think now, the reason for this reflection it becuse the walls I’ve forged are losing their strength. They are weak and brittle and won’t withstand the next crush or random kiss with a stranger. It’s crumbling before my eyes, and I can’t stop it. 

But oddly enough, I’m okay with it.

There is still this lingering fear, the memory of pain etched into my consciousness. But I am a being designed to love. To love so freely and wholeheartedly that whoever gets a taste instantly craves more. My love is this special living force; it has its own life, and by hiding it away, it’s left me hollow. 

Where my burning heart once resided, a barren frosted valley has taken its place. It’s bitter, unforgiving, and the cold is beginning to bite back. 

The spark within me I’ve so carefully preserved is growing; it’s cultivating the strength of a forest fire. It’s angry and raging, tired of being ignored and locked away, it’s getting ready to consume whoever steps into my life next.

And for them, I simply wish them good luck. 

I will forever envy the reckless nature of my younger self, but I will never regret the way she loved.

And now this version of me? She’s ready to let it all out for someone willing to walk through the flames and hold my heart the way it deserves.

There is hope, there is a version of healing, but there is no forgetting. But that’s the beauty in life, is it not? To love and be loved back, whoever long or brief the moment is.

To experience the depths of both love and pain to such extremes and witness what we can survive. 

It’s all we ever want at the end of the day, to love and know you’re loved back with equal ferocity.

Signing off,