First love.

Do you guys remember your first love?  I do.  I was about 12 years old.  I don't really remember how I met him.  I remember admiring him from afar for a long time.  He was "older".  I was a pest to him.

I was still living in NJ.  Everyone from my neighborhood hung out at the park by the basketball courts.  Technically he was from a neighboring neighborhood.  But once in a while him and his friends would come play basketball at our park.  When I would see him and his friends round the corner of the park my heart would just stop.  Sometimes to the point where I just had to leave.  Especially after I knew that someone (I don't really remember who) had told him I had a crush on him.  This was really the only time I ever saw him, at the park.  Like I said, he was older and we didn't go to the same school.  But he did literally live one block away from me but there was really no reason we would ever interact.

I don't know how but I got his phone number.  And I would actually build up the nerve to call him sometimes.  We kind of became friends.  He even called me once in a while.  This went on for a while and just when I thought it could actually become something my parents announced to my sister and I that we were moving to FL!  OMG, life was over.  I would never find another cute boy to like ever again!  For months, my heart ached just thinking we would never be anything.  I would be a thousand miles away.  There was one particular song on the radio at the time that expressed perfectly my heart ache of having to move away from the biggest crush of my young life.  I don't know the name or the artist but I heard it on the radio the other day and it brought me right back there.  I love how music does that.

After I moved to FL it was absolutely painful.  Literally, my body ached from missing him so much.  But seriously, I was 13 at this time.  What the heck did I know about being in love?  I wrote all over my school folders "I heart (name omitted to protect the innocent)"  After a few years we somehow became penpals.  We wrote to each other for years, getting to know each other.  He was in college, fell in love with a girl and they were going to live happily ever after.  I was 19 and an aimless high school dropout.  It just wasn't meant to be.  Then we stopped writing to each other.

But, of course, everything happens for a reason.  I think I turned out to be a pretty damn good catch.  Too bad he missed out.

Who was your first love?