Scribbles about love

Sunday Scribblings for this week...

My first love.
Well I thought it was love, and I suppose it was what I needed it to be at the time. With my husband now, whom I love deeply, I know what true, complete love is, but at the time, years ago, when I really cared for someone for the first time, I was sure it was love...for a while.
I’ve always been rather shy and more than a little odd and more of a tomboy. Guys were friends, not dates. As a result it seems I had many a friend over the years fall in love with me, with me sadly not reciprocating (although sometimes not for my lack of trying). I dated a few people when I was younger, but honestly, it was more of a one sided thing for them than me…I just couldn’t seem to “click” in a way I needed after the initial “hey, you’re sweet” wore off. I think I left a few hearts broken on the way…and I miss the friendships I had with them in the end. The "nice girl effect" I believe my friend Heather called it...
But the first person I ever cared deeply for?
We were close friends for most of a year and as the college year ended I realized I really cared for him. I’d been through a few tough things in my life in the previous year and was having difficulty being close to people in general, but he made me feel special and I wanted to be near him –I think it was that I really finally I felt safe with him. Before he left to fly home to Ontario I told him I cared about him and he admitted that he felt the same. We talked on the phone and he even flew me out that summer to stay with his family and get to know them. We were close and dated for over 2 years. Then, I went away to a different school for university and began to realize in the the first few months apart that he really was just a kindred friend…one of my best, but not someone I had ever really loved romantically or felt passionate about and probably never would. In the end, we talked and after a few tears remained close friends. Years later, he’s happily married to his true love…and so am I. After him I swore off dating and love as a silly thing I just couldn’t get the hang of and contentedly got on with life. I suppose that’s why I stumbled upon true love after that – I finally knew what I needed…and it managed to sneak up on me unaware!

And my first love – my true love? He saved me from a horrible “lurker” at a friends wedding, and afterwards we spent the next week together. We were immediate friends and were inseparable…eventually both falling for each other and unable to stop our growing feelings for each other...like nothing I'd ever known or felt before. In a few months we’ll have been together 11 years and I’m now happily married to him, and though it’s not always fairy tales and clouds, he makes me truly happy and I can honestly say I am truly in love. J is my sweetest and truest friend and love and makes me feel I am the most wonderful woman on the planet.