My first love.

The music starts to seep into my ears. It's gentle and inviting. It takes me a moment but the world around me starts to fade away and soon, it is but my music and I.

Whenever I get transported by music, nothing else matters but what is playing in my ears and the worlds in which it transports me to. The songs that I bring with me from phone to phone are the ones that transport me to a different dimension. Sure, I like to listen to songs that make me feel things or that are similar to what I feel, but those songs are more like medicine. They match my feelings and appease my symptoms. Somewhat like a catharsis. But some songs go beyond just remedy for the soul; some songs make you dream and are a means for you to escape and to live somewhere else. In a way, regardless if I use it to dream or as remedy, music is the prescription medication I need to take twice a day.

My heart is comfortable in my chest, my thoughts are quiet and all there is is the earthy and deep voice of the man signing me to another dimension. In that moment, I see her. My eyes only catch a glimpse of her but the moment they did, the world seemed to have slowed down. That blink in time pierced my chest as if a javelin had made a hole through my flesh.

Immediately I felt compelled towards her. I had the vague feeling of knowing her but I did not. She seemed familiar and yet part of me despised her. She reminded me of too many things. I love her but I do not want to know her. I have this innate feeling that she does not want to get to know me either. We were too close for comfort. Our familiarity too deep to be loved. It would take a miracle, maybe as painful as birth or being burnt alive, for us to love each other. It would take a third World War for us to be at peace and to accept one another.

A forbidden love.

I didn't see her again.

The girl that brought me such aching longing to be loved by her.

I had met someone. He was an amazing person. We didn't spend much time together, I was young and my mother was inflexible. But I loved his smile. Something about the sadness in his smile made me find it amazing. He was a heart broken lad and we were too young to really know that it was unfair of him to develop feelings towards me. He broke my heart after two months since he never really loved me. He just used me as a substitute for the person who had broken me. I felt used. 

Today, I don't resent him for having done that to me. 

It didn't take long after that for another guy to start liking me. I was surprised to be stuck in a love triangle.I had to pick one of the two people. I chose. We dated for a bit. I couldn't love him, not because I still loved my first lover, it was because I couldn't be there for him as much as he wanted me to be. He wanted me to be his parent, despite him having both of them. We had known each other since we were kids. This moment in our lives had destroyed our friendship.

Today, one of the people I grew up with is no longer in my life.

I met a third man. He was not like the others. I did not like him for his smile or for his body, for yes, that was what I liked about the second guy. I loved this man for his words. His mind was what I loved the most. More than his features that I loved, I loved the complexity of his words. But he was too complex for me. My poor self could not handle the complexity of our relationship. Our difference was the reason why it had so many hiccups.

But thanks to this man, I saw her again. She returned to me. I finally saw her a little bit longer than a blink in time and space. It was sudden and unpleasant. I saw her one day and from that point she just couldn't leave me alone. The thought of her haunted my every movement and thought. She made my cheeks red and my heart race. When I would talk to others about her, I was often left with this feeling that she was a terrible person and that it was a terrible thing to want to love and be loved by her. I had to dig deep to really want to love her. Why did I have to go to such lengths for her? She was a broken, savage,and an ugly thing that no one would ever want to get to know. 

The next few weeks after her return, she troubled my every move. She troubled my every thought. My heart was distraught in my chest. She made me anxious. I could not shake her off. Though it was easy for me to just discard her, ignore her and forget about her, my desires of being loved by her and to love her shook me back on track of my conquest. I could not get rid of my feelings for her.

Sleepless nights, loss of appetite and incapacity to focus were now masters of my days. Months had gone by this way. I had to gather some kind of strategy to approach this unkempt garden of rose that was separating she and I. I had to think and plan how to clean up the garden of thorns and petals before I could even reach the den she called home. As I got to work, I saw little glimpses here and there of her wild eyes stained by tears, her hair, sometimes an arm, or her back. 

I just wish that sometime soon I can confess and finally love the woman that I see in the mirror every morning. I hope one day I can look at myself and be proud of the ugliness and the beauty in me. The garden is very difficult to get through but I'm already on this path of self-discovery, I may slow down and maybe fall and stop, but I will keep trying until I reach her. I have to meet my first and only love.