I was never the cool kid in school, though I always wanted to be.
Unfortunately as a closeted boy who did drama and spent his break times in the dance studio, I sat on my own most lunch times unless some kids I’d known from primary school took pity on me and let me sit at the end of their table.
School just didn’t work for me – until one day, at the age of 14, when I was walking down the corridor and caught the eye of one of the cool kids. It was a typical teenage crush: my stomach did a flip and my throat tightened with nerves as he looked back at me, holding my gaze for just long enough.
Many corridor encounters later we had struck up a friendship, and soon after that, I started my first relationship with him. It was a strange set up – I was still closeted while he had just come out; he was popular, and I was not.
We’d steal moments after school, kissing in the bushes, or we would meet up in town on a Saturday afternoon. We’d stay up all night on MSN and smile at each other secretly across the school canteen.
We ended up in a relationship for three years, and as I got ready to leave school, I thought I’d found the person I was meant to be with for the rest of my life. His honesty about his sexuality inspired me to come out not longer after our relationship began.
It’s now been 10 years since he took his own life.
His death was a complete shock to everyone. He was the friend who always seemed so happy, so confident – as though he had everything together.
His funeral was hard. It was the first time my heart had ever truly felt broken – I’m not sure anybody ever thinks they will have to bury someone they thought would be around forever. And up until that point, I was convinced that there was still a way the situation could be fixed, that somehow it could be reversed. When the day came, so did the realisation that it couldn’t.
In the months that followed, I lost myself just trying to make it through life day by day. I dropped out of university after my grief became too overwhelming and struggled to keep a job; I spent many nights hidden away, missing out on friends’ birthdays and family parties. I was angry and bitter and suffering from, what was at the time, undiagnosed Complex PTSD.
People say that when you lose a partner, you turn yourself away from love and embrace an independent life. But I went in the opposite direction. I craved care and intimacy; I wanted somebody to spend my life with, believing that would prove that my first love’s death wasn’t my fault. I needed to know that I wasn’t the problem – that I could jump straight into a relationship as and when I wanted.
My next relationship, five years after my boyfriend’s death, quickly fell apart. We met through mutual friends and the first few months were great but it soon became apparent that I was still lost in my grief, comparing my new relationship to the one I never got to finish. It was hard for my new partner to understand, and he felt that I was holding him up to the standard of somebody else.
There were various love interests after we broke up, but none ever lasted. Every time I felt as though I was ready, I would go on a first date only for the situation to become too painful, and I would rarely agree to a second.
I was beginning to unravel. One morning, when I was 23, rather than waking up and rushing into work, I sat on the end of my bed and cried. My sadness turned to anger and I punched a hole in the wall. Realising something serious was going on, I phoned my mum who helped me arrange an emergency appointment at the doctors for that afternoon. I moved back home to be with my parents, and I began to focus on myself. I went back to university to study for a masters, and I began to carve out a career in social media.
I also entered therapy and began a process – not of getting over the death, not dealing with it, but healing from it.
During one of my first sessions, I realised I should have spent less time chasing after a new boyfriend to ease my pain, and more time grieving. The grief process is unique to all of us – we process loss differently and for me, it meant just getting on with my life and boxing off my boyfriend’s death as something that didn’t happen.
I think it was all made harder because our relationship was one of firsts: my first kiss with a boy; my first sexual encounter; my first love. And because I hadn’t been ready to accept who I was at that time, a lot of our relationship happened in secret. It seemed easier to continue mourning silently because I had never been able to talk about him in life.
My friends always told me that one day, I would meet somebody who accepted me for everything, who would ease my fears and who could help me on the journey of healing. I refused to listen to them, often laughing at their words and dismissing them immediately.
I had made peace with my fate as an eternally single man who would go through life with his dog and his career.
This year has been strange for us all – I don’t think any of us could have imagined a pandemic happening in our lifetime, and we certainly weren’t to know the impact it would have on our lives – but in the middle of the upside down my friends’ predictions came true.
I have found something that I never thought I would have again – love.
My current partner began messaging me on Instagram in February but I refused to let my guard down and it took another two months for me to engage in a conversation. I finally caved and agreed to meet up. On our first date I ripped my jeans at the crotch; I then missed my train home, and had to stay for another night. On our second date, he dropped his dinner all over the brand new carpet.
It was a comedy of errors that provided much needed comedic relief. It was in those moments of genuine laughter that I realised how much I had missed having somebody to love.
On our third encounter, I lay on the sofa and cried. I had met his parents earlier in the evening and put a lot of pressure on myself to make a great first impression. It had gone well but when we were the last two awake, my PTSD flared in the new surroundings. I suddenly felt like I was at risk of losing this exciting and hilariously awkward relationship, terrified that all the progress I’d made over the course of the past decade had come to nothing.
He put down his glass of wine, joined me from the other sofa, wiped my tears and held me. He told me it didn’t matter, and that he would always support me. It was hard to accept to begin with because I’d spent so long on this journey alone, but when he offered to walk it with me, there was such a feeling of relief.
Ten years ago I resigned myself to being alone forever, or having various dating disasters at best. I thought I’d sit at my friends ’weddings and recall the tales of the times I’d thrown up on my date, or the time I discovered my date was married with children, but never how I found love because I had already lost it.
But, here I am, finally in a relationship that has changed my life. I spent my 20s grieving and healing, and I am finally coming through the other side.
We sometimes talk about how my first boyfriend’s death affected me. My current partner doesn’t mind me talking about the memories, and he supports me on the tough days.
But my first relationship taught me a lot, too: that true love is passionate and funny and rocky at times but when two people work together at carving a life that they can share in this world, it is one of the most beautiful things.
I’d like to think that losing my first love has made me a better boyfriend in the present. I make sure to check in on my partner’s mental health. I try to be there for him on the stressful days, I really value the time we spend together and I think I am more understanding.
I am at a place in my life and my recovery now where I can forget it enough to move on, happily and without guilt.
Last week in Love, Or Something Like It: I have only met my girlfriend once
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Love, Or Something Like It is a regular series for Metro.co.uk, covering everything from mating and dating to lust and loss, to find out what love is and how to find it in the present day. If you have a love story to share, email rosy.edwards@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/28/its-been-10-years-since-my-first-love-took-his-own-life-13648284/
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