First But Not the Greatest Love

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 9 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is: With Feb we think about love. Who was your first love? Do you know where they are now? Are you friends?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I've talked about my first real love a time or two on this blog. It's not a sore subject. The relationship ended badly and our attempt at a redo ended even worse. But overall, I don't look back in anger. Oasis taught me not to anyway.

Let me back up a moment and focus on the qualifier "real" that I used here.

I had what I called, at the time, relationships in both middle and high school, but these were extremely superficial. I mean what else can they be in middle school? I had a longer relationship in high school, and I really was infatuated with the person at the time, but I can't reflect back on it and say I was in love or loved them. It was something to do really, and I didn't even cry when it was over. I was relieved. I wasn't in the right place to meet my high school sweetheart, fall in love, and marry at 18. That wasn't who I could be nor was it who I wanted to be. I was still exploring my sexuality, still not processing having been assaulted, still with so much resentfulness over the shitty childhood I had and how fucking awful living with my father was and then my stepfather after that. It wasn't an easy time and having been assaulted at such a young age, I wasn't every going to be able to have an intense romance. My innocence was long dead along with the child I never got to be.

I was so very angry.

It was the year after I graduated that I started this first real, serious relationship with one of my good friends all throughout school who had expressed having feelings for me but at the time I hadn't been ready to date. Anyone. It wasn't personal. I just couldn't do it. It took awhile for me to get to a point where I thought I was emotionally ready for it and to recognize the feelings as genuine and not some silly crush or feeling obligated because he had those feelings. Even then I recognized we're so often taught as young women to prioritize boys' feelings and shit over our own. Realizing the genuineness of my feelings did very little at first though. It was some kind of heartache for awhile when I first figured things out. I thought I had ruined my chance by never wanting to take it further when he did.

It all worked out eventually, and we moved in together when we were just 19. I really think that was our downfall. It was too much responsibility too fast. He had been really sheltered and never had to do much for himself. We both had issues, dysfunctional families... I had unresolved trauma. I HAD to get out of my mom and stepdad's home. It was all too much too soon, but we kept at it for a year and a half. Trying to manage an apartment and college and jobs and still make time for each other and our friends really made enjoying our new found freedom pretty difficult. It didn't help that my past with other dudes and me being queer made him insecure. And it certainly didn't help that I had like zero self esteem. We were an absolute mess.

To be clear, I don't think if we had gotten together under better circumstances that we might still be together. I'm so vastly different than I once was, and he's more or less an adult version of the same guy. A few more wrinkles, a little less hair, some life lessons, and even more responsibilities now than when we failed, but essentially he's the very same person I once knew. I had to go through literal hell to address my traumas and be reborn as something mostly whole. Kintsugi for the proverbial soul isn't exactly easy. And the older I've grown the more my humor has changed, the more I've addressed my innate biases, the more I've become intersectional, a feminist, and a far leftist. I would hardly recognize the girl I was when he met me, when we were together, or even the girl he left behind. Ive fixed so many cracks, she's virtually unrecognizable.

Life happens, as they say. And I'm okay with the direction life took for me. It hasn't been easy, sure, but I'm okay. I'm at peace with WHO I've become even when life isn't easy, and I think coming from where I did that's really the best I can hope for. It's better than a lot of folks who walked a similar path.

We aren't friends. I don't think we're allowed to be because new partners get insecure about friendships with old ones. At least that's how it usually works around here. (On his end not mine. I don't go for that shit in my personal life ever.) I do miss the friendship, but if I'm really truthful I know it wouldn't be much of one even without insecure significant others. We're too different. My values and humor are too different. And I draw a hard line on people who use vulnerable populations as a punchline. I stopped even being Facebook friends with all the people we hung out with at the time especially since one of those is a trump supporter who literally grabbed me by the crotch one night WHILE we were dating and they all still make excuses for it. Go figure.

We did talk a few times over the years expressing our responsibilities in why things went bad without reminiscing, apologizing without it being awkward. I don't duck or run when I see him in public which is rare now that I'm housebound. So it wasn't awful even though it really was my biggest heartbreak to date. And it wasn't something I held onto resentment over. But it's never going to go down in history books as a great romance or in my own history as the one that got away. But I did love him, and I'm thankful for everything I learned about myself and relationships along the way.

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Here are the rest of the participants!

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

A 'lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Medicated Musings https://mymedicatedmusings.blogspot.com

Exes

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 6 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My  “Secret Subject” is: You’re grocery shopping & run into your “first love”. What do you do? What do you say?

It was submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

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Here's the thing about relationships: I don't do them often.

 I am commitment phobic, independent to a fault, and I have high expectations in a partner. Not too many people understand that and can jive with it, and I can't stand most people, so my relationships have been few and far between. I don't have many exes at all, and those I do have I don't have some weird bad blood with. There is only one person from my early high school days with whom I will never speak again, but that had more to do with things he had done before we met over anything that happened between us while we "dated"...and I mean, does high school even count anyway? Either way, my first actual love came a few years after, but either way I just don't have a lot of hate or anger when it comes to the few people I tried the commitment thing with...

 Here's the thing about first loves: I don't think I was able to have one in the same way a lot of people do.

 Being sexually assaulted at 13 changed me forever. Even my first really serious relationship wasn't uncomplicated and without baggage. I held back, grew depressed, and was a large factor in why it ended. I absolutely couldn't be happy, and I couldn't be confident or feel safe. I had entirely too much anger and resentment, and I couldn't relinquish any little bit of control. A lot of that stemmed from trauma, and in so many ways everything from the moment that trauma occured has been shaped by this sliver of time in which every part of me was violated and rebuilt into someone wholly different. I died for someone's 2 minutes of pleasure and became someone who had REALLY BIG ISSUES to work through. Love was always and will always be a very complex topic that needs a lot of navigation for me, and since it happened so young, I didn't get a chance to explore love and relationships without that stain of trauma. 

Here's the thing about MY first love: A part of me still loves him. And always will.

 There's no anger or resentment that he couldn't handle me as a mess. I'm not angry that he, too, was a mess. He's probably still a mess to be honest. He was (is?) a beautiful, dorky soul. We didn't remain friends, and honestly, sometimes I miss that friendship. It got me through dark times in high school before we dated after graduating. We were friends first, dated for a bit, got our first apartment ever together. It was freeing but chaotic and stressful. Between always hurting for money and the messes we both were, we destroyed what we had. So what I ultimately mean is that there's no reason for it to be tense and weird because we dated. We made good memories and really loved one another...it just wasnt the time and place in our lives for things to work.

 Here's the thing about social standards: fuck 'em.

 I know it's supposed to be weird and taboo to run into someone who saw you naked a bunch, but I just don't operate that way. I'm still friends with several people who have seen me in all kinds of states of nudity, who I have shared myself with just once or plenty of times. It's really not all that odd for me, and it wouldn't be a factor in how I reacted to seeing this person.

Finally, here's the thing about unexpected social interaction: I avoid it like my dog avoids me anytime she hears the word "tub."

 If I saw him anywhere, I might duck and run like I do when I see anyone I know because I hate social interaction, but if we happened to wind up in the same checkout line, I'd speak and treat him like anyone else I feel forced to socialize with--like I'm the most awkward human being in the world or perhaps an alien just getting used to posing as a human for the first time. I might respond to questions like "how've you been" with "thanks, you too" and turn 15 shades of red in a record .2 milliseconds. Rest assured, though, that's how I am with anyone not just someone i gave my battered heart to nearly a couple decades ago.

So. If I ran into my first love...it'd be just another thing.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2019/01/team-summer-secret-subject-swap.html?fbclid=IwAR1JVZUKpAytvUQ-5UEHGTRvgi85AZ20ZNIyX_siCSUSlpFri4P1SizPD6Q

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2019/01/jasper-jan-2019-sss.html?fbclid=IwAR2w-WszcjXApy401KzHhZhiO_E9GvMHEF6wgs-GbOREe1UA0e7EYy34UXg

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch       

The Side Effects of Stolen Innocence

I never had the opportunity to have a true, innocent, uncomplicated-by-baggage first love.

That’s just the way the cards were dealt to me this hand, and it’s something that I’ve tried not to dwell on too much, but the facts are that being raped at 13, losing my virginity that way, changed everything. I have no idea what pre-rape sex is like. I don’t know what it’s like to fall hard for someone and make the decision about whether or not to go ALL THE WAY for the first time. That innocence was stolen from me long before I had that opportunity to desperately dwell and overthink that decision and relish in the specialness that comes from sharing that moment with someone in all its imperfect perfectness.

With that loss of innocence comes a lot of bullshit. A lot of emotional issues and physical reactions that affect me as an adult even 20 years later. I’ve loved, surely. I can recall the people in my life that I’ve loved so strongly I thought I would never be able to eat or sleep again when the relationship was over. I can relive with fondness some of the better times we shared and feel a momentary swirl of butterflies when I see them somewhere unexpectedly. I’ve not been in many relationships, and not even all of those were really great, but I know in my lifetime I truly loved and was loved just as fiercely in return. The stark, laid-bare truth for me, though, is that it was never the kind of love that wasn’t tethered by the understanding of what a man could do when “no” wasn’t enough and the primal, unrelenting fear and pain that comes with that knowledge. I have never had the kind of love that is free of that robbery, free of the haunting of an assault that I didn’t deserve.

What I imagine first love to be is sort of like purring bunnies in a field of gummy bear flowers pooping rainbow cupcakes under a radiant boombox sun raining down tasty jams and pulsing glitter all over the place every time the bass hits.

Okay, so maybe I owned too much Lisa Frank shit when I was kid, but either way that image is total

innocent perfection in my mind. Maybe I’m completely off base but that first attempted relationship seems to be more pure than everything that comes after the first gut-wrenching heartache that always follows when you end something with a person you absolutely fall no-holds-barred head over heels for… (and what's more pure than rabbits that eat gummy bear flowers and shit out cupcakes? nothing. not a fucking thing). That’s not to say I think that first love is the best—better than any other relationship you experience in your lifetime, but it’s the only time you start with a clean slate, the only time you don’t bring the good, the bad, and the ugly of every other relationship with you. It’s less weighed down by everything that came before it. In a lot of ways, it’s a fantasy world at least to begin with…people have yet to turn out to be the exact opposite of what you have imagined them to be or break your heart or cheat or lie or fuck with your head. And then when the other shoe drops, it’s perhaps one of the biggest reality checks you face in life.

My shoe dropped before I had a chance to experience the naivety of it all.

I rail on so often about rape culture on social media, in person, on the phone….anytime and anywhere the conversation is appropriate and even when it’s not. The fact that rape goes largely unpunished in our society and that the blame is often laid upon the shoulders of the victim to carry as if she (or he) was not already carrying a heavy load just by way of being victimized means that the big picture of what a person loses and the insecurities a person gains after being raped is ignored. I didn’t suffer a momentary, fleeting fear that resolved itself after the event was over. My entire being was violated and my existence was forever changed while the perpetrator of that death—the murder of my innocence—has gone on to have a life completely unaffected by the fear, the pain, the anger, the shame, and the guilt that has so often peppered the very essence of my being. It has been 20 years since that night, and I still can’t answer the door when I’m home alone without panicking. I never had my innocent, vibrant, Lisa Frank-esque love. I have never been able to set foot in my father’s house without reliving it. And, that will never change… None of it. It’s with me for as long as I live and breathe. We, as a people, have to stop and consider the toll that this takes on 1 out of 5 women (sometimes multiple times) in our lives. Think of all the women you know and how many might have been victims. How many have to live with that memory and all the side effects that come with it? Until we start recognizing how serious the act itself is, how damaging in all manners of life for the length of time the victim lives rape is, it’s always going to be about changing the behavior of the victim because that seems easier…because the act itself seems horrible to the imagination but so few people seem to consider just how depraved and far-reaching it is. Here’s your chance through my words, as vulnerable as they make me here today, to see just one of the many things my rapist robbed me of…. It’s not just a horrible act that can be prevented through modifying potential victims; it’s essentially a murder. The person who existed before the rape is lost and someone almost completely different rises from the ashes of the former self. Like a phoenix with an anxiety disorder and a guilt-complex that keeps it from soaring as high and freely as it could otherwise.

97% of rapists never spend time in prison according to RAINN. Isn’t it time we change that?

And, as always, this is me taking a seemingly light hearted Sunday Confessions prompt and being all preachy about it. That's what I do. But, please check out the rest of the contributions at More Than Cheese and Beer and the always interesting anonymous confessions on the MTCAB Facebook page.