Second Time's A Charm

Do you remember how it feels to be really, truly in love for the first time?
Now, I am not referring to the giddy, innocent "puppy love" that only lasts a few weeks or months until you get bored and move on to the next one. No....I am talking about all-consuming, unconditional, genuine, forever love. Real love.
The first time you truly love someone, you do it wholeheartedly....because that is exactly what you have. A whole heart, an unbroken heart, a strong heart. A heart that beats and lilts and has never felt the sharp pain of regret or rejection or lost love. In your first love, you invest everything inside of you. You give them your all - your every free hour, your every hug, your every secret, your every kiss. You give them these things because, in your innocent and naive mind, your love deserves these things. Your love could do you no harm. How could such a thing that grants you so much pleasure ever bring you pain?
Do you remember the way your first love came before everything else in your life? Forget obeying your parents. Forget spending time with your friends. Forget the homework that is piling up. Forget practice. At least just for tonight. With as wonderful as the time spent with family and friends was....with as wonderful as getting straight A's was, or accomplishing athletic goals was....nothing held a candle to the way it felt to wrap your arms around your loved one and just be.
Every love song you heard was a song written for the two of you....
I promise you, I promise that I'll run away with you....
....It took a long, long, long time...I'm so happy I found you
I love you, yes I love you, oh! how I love you....
You would talk and make out in the car for hours upon hours until both of your parents were calling, worried sick or livid. You had to be touching at all times - linking at the ankles while studying, holding hands constantly, cuddling through every car ride, his arm around her shoulder and her legs across his lap for all to see.....it was enough to embarrass your parents to the point that they had to sit down and tell you to tone it down. But gosh, no! It wasn't meant in a sexual way in the slightest! You just loved each other so much that you could not stand to be apart, even for a few seconds.
Do you remember how it feels to fight with your first love? There is no pain comparable to it. Usually it is over something small and completely ridiculous, but you both start screaming and end bawling then, terrified to lose each other, you brush the issues aside and settle.
And you keep settling.
And settling.
And settling.
Settling until you begin to wonder if it is worth the fight. Does the pleasure outweigh the pain or does the pain outweigh the pleasure? Are they balanced? What do you do if they are exactly equal? I can not fathom living without you....But what if you are forced to face that? How would you even begin to live without each other? I honestly do not remember how I lived my everyday life before you.
It is too much for such a young person....
But what if we are not meant for our first loves? Oh, I am sure that some lucky suckers out there got the whole package....fell in love in high school and never had to do it again. But what if a majority of our first loves were intended as a lesson? To teach us how to love, how to hurt, how to treat each other, and how not to? To grow us and mature us and to help us understand the value of a relationship, because there is no way in hell that we would have known all of that if it had not been for that person and those struggles?
There is no denying that it is an unfortunate loss and a terrible hurt. Losing your first love is like experiencing the death of a loved one. You lie on the floor screaming out and crying like an infant because you know that there is nothing you can do to bring them back. Yet, how would you have known if it was not for that moment? That gruesome, defining moment....that you had cried all of the tears your eyes could possibly expel from your body...that you stood up, took a deep breath, and decided that you were finished? How would you have known? 
So maybe we are in fact, not meant for our first loves. Maybe our first loves make us crazy and unstable and steal our souls, and maybe that excites us. But maybe we need stability and the promise of tomorrow. Maybe we need someone who will take us out on dates and pay for every meal. Maybe we need someone who will tell us we look beautiful on our good days and hold our hair back as we vomit on our bad days....yet somehow still have the guts to kiss us goodnight, on the lips. Maybe we need someone who can protect us and defend us. Maybe we need someone who is strong enough to scoop us up and turn us upside down as we scream and laugh uncontrollably. Maybe we need someone who we can trust enough to talk to other people of the opposite sex without being overly flirtatious. Maybe we need someone who can set us free and allow us independence, even though we could easily spend every second of every day with them. Maybe we need the kind of person who challenges us to be better versions of ourselves, even as we do things that they do not approve of. Maybe we need forehead kisses, bone-crushing hugs, and maybe even to be tickled from time-to-time. Maybe we need someone whose family we simply adore from his or her parents to the grandparents to the little Dachshund! Maybe we need laughter along with the moments that take our breath away....and maybe we need the laughter to take our breath away.
Maybe we need someone who we love as surely as the day is long who loves us the same. Maybe this is the kind of person we need. Maybe we weren't meant for our first loves.....
But maybe....just maybe we were meant for our second.