Chapter 3: The Girl that Walked Away

I think one of the hardest things about growing up is discovering that you can love someone and still feel uncertain about whether you want to be with them.

That was what I was beginning to experience.

I had spent so much time loving him, making memories with him, and imagining that we would remain together. Yet, when I finally had to think seriously about our future, I couldn't see how everything would work out.

We lived far apart. We were both beginning new chapters of our lives, and I wanted to experience university without constantly worrying about a relationship I didn't know how to maintain.

Sometimes, I wondered whether things would have been different if we had lived closer to each other. Maybe we would have spent more time together. Maybe we would have had more opportunities to grow as a couple. Maybe the relationship would have continued to thrive.

But I couldn't know that for certain.

What I did know was that I wasn't confident about our future, and I didn't want to keep pretending that I was.

My feelings had become confusing. There were days when I wanted him so badly, when I remembered everything we had shared and felt grateful to have him in my life. Then there were other days when I questioned the relationship and wondered whether I wanted to continue at all.

I hated that uncertainty.

He hadn't suddenly become a terrible person. I didn't have some dramatic reason to hate him or a secret betrayal to point to. The problem was that I no longer understood my own feelings well enough to promise him the kind of relationship he deserved.

And I knew I couldn't keep him in a relationship simply because I was afraid of losing what we had.

Eventually, I ended it.

It wasn't an easy decision, but I felt that it was the right one. I didn't want to stay with him while questioning whether I genuinely wanted to be there. I didn't want to become someone who cheated or hurt him because I had been too afraid to admit that my feelings had changed.

I knew I was hurting him, but I didn't know what else to do.

For me, it felt like the relationship had reached a point where love alone couldn't solve the problems we were facing.

About a month after the breakup, we spoke again.

That conversation made me realise just how much the separation had affected him. He told me how hurt he was and how painful it had been to lose me.

Listening to him was difficult.

This was someone who had once given me gifts that made me smile for days. Someone who had been part of some of my happiest memories. Someone I had loved enough to write a song about never letting go.

And now, I was the person causing him so much pain.

I felt bad. I genuinely did.

But feeling guilty about hurting him didn't suddenly make me want to return to the relationship. My uncertainty was still there, and I didn't want to go back simply because I couldn't bear to see him hurting.

I knew that wouldn't be fair to either of us.

Eventually, I blocked him around March 2024.

It sounds harsh when I look back on it, but at the time, I felt that I needed to move on. I didn't know how to navigate the situation, and creating distance seemed like the easiest way to stop going back and forth in my mind.

For a while, we didn't speak.

Then, around August, he tried to reach me again, including through Google Meet.

I answered one of his calls, but I wasn't particularly kind.

I asked who it was and told him that if he had nothing serious to say, he should hang up. Then I ended the call.

Looking back, I know I could have handled that moment differently. Whatever I was feeling, he was still someone who had mattered to me, and I didn't need to be so dismissive.

But I was in a different place emotionally, and I wasn't interested in reopening something I had already struggled to leave behind.

We didn't speak again for a while.

Eventually, we had another brief conversation.

Part of me had hoped that we might talk about our past, perhaps acknowledge what had happened between us and finally say some of the things that had been left unsaid.

But the conversation didn't go that way.

He didn't bring up our relationship, and when I tried to engage with him, his response wasn't what I had hoped for.

At first, I didn't quite know what to make of it.

Then I began to understand that perhaps he didn't want to revisit the past. Maybe he had already accepted what happened and didn't see a reason to discuss it again.

I couldn't expect him to approach our history the way I did. Just because I wanted to talk about it didn't mean he wanted the same thing

And that was something I had to accept.

After that, something gradually changed in me.

I stopped thinking about him as often. I stopped having those moments when I wondered what he was doing or found myself getting caught up in memories of our relationship.

It wasn't that I suddenly forgot him. I don't think forgetting someone who was such an important part of your life happens that way.

I simply began to accept that our relationship was over.

Sometimes, I still think about him. Occasionally, I miss the memories or wonder about the person he has become. There are moments when I remember something from school and smile because, despite everything that happened afterwards, those memories still belong to me.

But I don't want to go back.

I don't want to rebuild the relationship we had, and I don't spend my days wishing that we could somehow return to the way things were.

I have come to understand that I can appreciate what we shared without wanting to experience it all over again.

For a long time, I thought that if you genuinely loved someone, you were supposed to hold on to them. I thought that walking away meant you hadn't loved them enough, or that perhaps the relationship hadn't been as meaningful as you once believed.

Now, I see things differently.

Sometimes, two people can genuinely love each other and still be unable to make a relationship work. Sometimes, the circumstances aren't right. Sometimes, people grow, their feelings change, or they discover that what they want from life is no longer compatible with what they have together.

And sometimes, you have to make a decision even when you don't have all the answers.

I know that my decisions hurt him. I know there were moments when I could have handled things better. I won't pretend that I did everything perfectly, because I didn't.

But I also know that I was young. I was trying to understand myself, my feelings, and the kind of life I wanted to build. I didn't want to stay with someone out of guilt, and I didn't want to make promises I wasn't sure I could keep.

I was trying to do what I thought was right, even when I didn't know how to do it without causing pain.

And despite the way things ended, I don't regret that we met.

He was the first person I genuinely fell in love with. The first boy who made me understand what it felt like to care about someone in that particular way. The first person with whom I experienced so many of those little things that people remember about their first love.

The gifts. The conversations. The awkwardness. The first kiss.

The way we went from arguing with each other to becoming two teenagers who wanted to spend time together.

I don't know how he remembers our relationship today. Perhaps his memories are different from mine. Perhaps there are things he remembers that I have forgotten, or moments he understood differently from the way I did.

I can't speak for him.

I can only tell my side of the

story and be honest about what that relationship meant to me.

And to me, it was real.

It was innocent, beautiful, and unforgettable. It was two young people experiencing love for the first time, figuring things out together, and creating memories that would stay with them long after they stopped being a couple.

It didn't have to last forever for those memories to matter.

I once wrote a song about never letting him go. At sixteen, I believed that was what I wanted. I wanted to hold on to the boy who had become such an important part of my life, and I couldn't imagine willingly walking away from everything we had shared

But life didn't unfold the way I had imagined it would.

Eventually, I became the girl who walked away.

And although I sometimes wonder what we might have become if things had been different, I no longer feel that I need an answer.

Maybe, if we had lived closer, we would have stayed together longer. Maybe something else would eventually have changed things. I'll never know.

What I do know is that, for a time, we had something beautiful.

I was loved by someone I trusted, and I loved him in return. We made each other happy, shared a part of our lives, and experienced something neither of us had experienced before.

Then our story changed, and we had to continue our lives separately.

I hope to love again someday. I hope to experience another kind of happiness with someone else, someone whose life and circumstances fit with mine in a way that allows us to build something lasting.

But I don't need to erase my first love to make room for that possibility.

I can remember him without wanting him back. I can acknowledge the pain I caused without pretending that leaving was necessarily the wrong decision. I can accept that the relationship ended without rewriting our memories as though they were never worth having.

Because when I look back at the girl I was in SS2, I don't see someone who wasted her time falling in love.

I see a young girl who experienced something genuine, who made memories she will probably never completely forget, and who eventually had to learn that growing up sometimes means letting go of things you once thought you would keep forever.

And if I could tell that younger girl anything, I wouldn't tell her not to fall in love.

I would tell her to enjoy it.

To stop picking unnecessary fights. To stop taking breaks every other minute. To be a little braver when she wants to kiss him. To enjoy the little moments instead of worrying so much about what they mean.

Because one day, those ordinary moments might become the memories she treasures most.

And perhaps that's the strange thing about first love.

You don't have to spend the rest of your life with the person for the love to have been real.

Sometimes, a person becomes part of your story without being part of your future.

And sometimes, you can look back at the love you once shared, smile at the beautiful parts, acknowledge the painful ones, and be grateful that it happened at all.

That was our kind of love.