Do you remember your first love?
It’s an interesting question and one to which my immediate response is; “Stupid question! Of course I do. It was, after all, my first love. How could I possibly forget it?” Then I start really thinking about it and begin to wonder. Who was my first love?
The first love triangle
Was it the beautiful firey-haired Roderick McCrae? The first three years of primary school were spent fighting for his attention with my then nemesis, Tracy.
Roderick’s dad worked on the cruise ships and was rarely home. When he did come home, he would splash out on his only son. Roderick’s birthday parties were legend! Only once was Roddy’s mum ever daft enough to include both Tracy and I on the invite list. I shall never forget the joy of attending the party without her a year later. Nor will I forget the pain of being stuck at home the following year knowing that she was sitting next to him in the pass the parcel ring! *sob*
Was Roddy my first love? I used to yell that I loved him, and that he was ‘mine!’ *stamp foot* into Tracy’s face almost daily.
When my mother told me he’d been killed in a tragic motorcycle accident at the young age of 21 I wept, but I was 38 when I first heard and had had no idea until that point.
The first… er…
Or Jimmy Green? The mysterious raven-haired ‘new boy’ who turned up half way through primary year 4 and stole my claim to being the best artist in the year. I was sickly jealous of the little running men he was famous for doodling. Everyone else loved them. I tried my damnedest to copy his comic style only to discover that my art was limited to being ‘technically good’ rather than compelling. I hated him to the point of obsessive fascination.
Jimmy was the son of a rigger. His dad would be on land for one precious weekend every month and had somehow still managed to build the house they lived in, brick-by-brick, all by himself. Jimmy had a pet jackdaw, wore socks on his hands in winter instead of gloves, and bit his blisters.
Jimmy Green showed me his thing!
The first elopement
Or was my first love Timmy O’Dea? My first official ‘boyfriend’. We met during Year One at secondary school. Together we ran away and spent the afternoon snuggled together in a sleeping bag eating refreshers and stealing mutually first kisses as the rain fell around us.
In our romantic bid to escape the oppression of our terribly non-tragic lives, we had made it all the way to the local park. The sleeping bag got soaking wet and very muddy and, later that evening, when I slunk back into my house, I had to hide it under my bed so my mother wouldn’t see it. I made it just in time for dinner of course. The sleeping bag was discovered a few days later… Timmy and I lasted about a week and a half.
The first ‘I love you’
Most in my family would of course pinpoint Simon Thwaite as my first boyfriend. At 15 it was the right time to be having a boyfriend and we were together for a whole year and one month so he sticks in the family memory. He is particularly well-remembered for wrapping himself in a massive box tied in a cliché red satin ribbon and giving himself to me on my 16th birthday. I was mortified when he then presented me with my first sexy underwear to unwrap in front of my entire family.
Simon popped my cherry soon after that sweet 16th. But that’s OK ‘cos I got his in return…
Together we explored our budding sexuality in a safe, mutual way over a long, drawn out period – an approach I would recommend to any young girl. One lesson I would pass on in hind sight however would be to make sure you shut the bedroom door – even if you think his parents are out.
We both said our first ‘I love you’s’ to one another and truly believed we meant it at the time.
The first passion
However, despite the fact that I wouldn’t change my introduction to sex for anything, if push came to shove, I would have to say that my first true love was probably Nick Thornley.
I was 17. He was 18.
I was in our local pub when some numpty poured cold beer down the back of my neck. I turned around to give the idiot a verbal thrashing and found myself staring into the most penetrating ice-blue eyes I had ever seen. I believe that every molecule in my entire being momentarily broke apart under his gaze. From then on I had to concentrate my entire attention on the tiny bubble that surrounded him, squeezing myself into it so that I might take residence in his soul, just to stay in one piece. The rest of the world simply vanished and for the next year and a half he was my entire existence.
Nick held me in his spell for a long time. Years after he had smooshed my heart into a trazillian pieces by sleeping with another girl during his first year at university, I still compared each and every man I ever met to him. However, even this great passion was something my heart was able to move on from eventually.
The point?
I guess, the reason why I’m sharing this is in the hope that, if some young person with a broken heart is reading this now they might realise that, however much it hurts now there is always another chance at love. It may be different, but that does not make it any the less important in the long-term. Love has many perspectives. New experiences can be just as satisfying. There’s generally more to come.
