After a lifetime of encountering innumerable love songs and stupid reality TV shows that depicted the unavoidable blindness that occurs in the presence of one’s first romantic partner, I thought I was smart enough to fall in love responsibly. At this time, I was thirteen and a little stupid. Feeling that I would heed any and all of the general advice given to me by various social media, I delved deep into the romantic opportunities presented by a fourteen year old boy named Nic.

I would like very much to say that Nic was not an ordinary boy, but he was just that. In fact, he was so ordinary that before the First Day of our many days together, I hadn’t paid him much attention. I thought he fit into every stereotype I could imagine, but that was never an issue for me seeing as I had never experienced any of those stereotypes (seeing as I am part of the minority that is the Canadian-Indian female), seeing as I was not and am not very involved in the stereotypical lives that stereotypical teenagers are stereotypically supposed to live. The aspects of him that made him commonplace were entirely unexplored territories and the chance to experience ‘normal’ was irresistible. It never even crossed my mind that he could be something more than just a normal teenage boy.

It all started out very simply, beginning appropriately on our First Day. Having found out that my freshly teenage eyes thought Nic to be attractive, one of my friends shouted through a window that he was standing outside of that I liked him, and he replied that the feeling was mutual, that he liked me as well. So easy. We endured the teasing of our friends and friendly teachers with good humor, and we soon became a habit of each other’s. We spent too much time together, listened to each other’s favorite songs, ran around each other’s neighborhoods until we found a place we could call our own, and after developing that inevitable blindness, spent 3 months navigating a world that we could not see, but instead created using the glory of young love.

Over time, we learned the details that made each of us up, and somehow we actually loved them too. I learned about his alcoholic sister, and his drug-abusive brother, and about a life that I couldn’t tell existed behind a boy that I hardly ever noticed before that First Day. I learned secrets about him that I can never forget and mistakes he made that he thought no one could forgive. He gave me power that swelled like an ocean in my hands, power that if I so chose, I could drown him in. But this was nothing. Nothing in comparison to the power that was excruciatingly easy to attain, far easier than anything I’d ever done. It was the power that could break him in half without leaving a single mark on his body.

All I had to do was tell him that I loved him. And I did. I told him. But more than that, I loved him.

I was not his first affair, his first girlfriend, his first whatever-a-fourteen-year-old-boy-can-manage-to-secure, but I was the first he loved, and the first who loved him back. I can't blame him for embracing so ardently the love I gave to him, because I did the same. I liked being loved. I liked everything about it, the attention, the confidence, the feeling of belonging. Of course he would feel the same way. But by accepting that I loved him, I could break him to pieces. Nothing else he gave me the power to do would have managed to do what I did by telling him that I stopped loving him. If I had screamed his darkest secrets at the top of my lungs it would not have hurt him like I hurt him on one of our last days together. For anything else that I could’ve done, he could’ve blamed me, and hated me, but for this one thing, he blamed and hated himself. Is it human nature to always feel inadequate? To feel insecure? To blame yourself even though it’s not your fault, it was never your fault, stop blaming yourself. Honestly, I don’t even know if it mattered that I did love him. All he had to do was believe me when I told him I did. The self-confidence and empowerment that came with knowing that someone who wasn't a part of your family, but valued you just as much loved you, actually loved you, was enough that when you took it away from him, he could no longer stand upright.

I had heard so many times how easy it was for someone to break you, and was certain that it would never happen to me, was careful to never allow it to happen to me. Not once did it cross my mind that I could be the one who was doing the breaking. I never thought I could have the power.

To say that I too suffered as a result of the choice I willingly made is selfish, but true. He moved a few months after our Last Day together, and I never saw him again, though I heard from him a year after our Last Day. He said he still cared for me and wanted to try again, and I told him I couldn't. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to start over with him again. Not after spending so much time aching over how much pain I'd caused, and seeing our old ghosts wandering around our favorite spot, his old bedroom floor, and down my street. I told him goodbye, and now I pretend I don't think about him sometimes. I don’t think about how I wake up some nights and thank the stars that we never took any pictures together. I don’t think about how I think about him every time it rains, and I don’t think about how I don’t listen to my favorite band anymore. I don’t wear the shirt he said he liked me wearing and I don't think about how much power he somehow had over me too.