Everyone has one. In my group of friends, we call them our “Noel.” I coined the term, because yes; I just didn’t seem to shut up about him (in my real life or in print,) the one that stole my heart away: my Noel, my first love.

First loves. They are a topic of endless discussion. Why? Because they never seem to go away. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the thoughts of him disappear. The truth is you can never be first-love-free.

First loves are true loves, ones you give your full heart to, mostly because you don’t know any better. The first time anyone falls in love, it is with total and complete abandon. The idea that your heart can be broken is the furthest thing from your mind, so you toss away logic and give it everything you have. The problem is that once that relationship ends, there is nothing left for you. A part of me will always belong to my first love, whether I want it to or not. He was such a huge part of my life for so long that I cannot simply rid myself of him, no matter how much time has elapsed.

The truth is… that kind of reckless love can never last, and is usually far more alive on one side of the relationship. I will always remember a quote from one of the less popular Woody Allen films that said “The only love that lasts in unrequited love.” Nothing could be truer. The love that we eventually discover was far more important to us is the love that we can never detach ourselves from. With time, we eventually realize that a love that intense rarely lasts, the memories become glossed over, and the reality (that we were the true fire in the relationship) becomes even hazier.

This does not mean that I never think about him, because memories last a lifetime. I know that I loved him truly, and dearly, and no matter how long I think that I could have been in love with him, the truth is, I am not in love anymore. I am in love with a memory that never existed. I am, however, allowed to love the “him” I thought I knew and the memories that we made.

He was my first love, my Romeo in the tragic way, but you move on; he moves on; because life goes on.