Is This Where it All Started?

When I say he was my first, what I mean is he was my first kiss, my first feeling of immense insecurity, my first feeling of uncontrollable jealousy, my first depressive episode and my first heartbreak. He exposed feelings within myself that I did not know how to control because they were unfamiliar territory.

I say unfamiliar territory only because these feelings emerged in the same form as my childhood trauma, depression, abandonment and trust issues but carried a completely different persona. I know I experienced pain, depression, jealousy and insecurities as a child but these emotions felt different, almost like a relative or a new and improved version of my existing pain.

They felt like a familiar wound that took me a long time to dismiss, bury and scab over but were quickly torn wide open with new lacerations added.

Of course I forgave my boyfriend for his infidelity. He was my first boyfriend and I believed he was the only person in my life who truly loved me, but I never got over it.

I allowed my feelings to manifest and I carried them with me throughout all of my future relationships. I was this girl going from one relationship to the next, each time with new lesions and insecurities, hoping that someone would love me for all my flaws but these imperfections weren't mine to carry.

I was this girl who thought she was damaged, unlovable, unworthy and full of guilt but all of these imperfections and lacerations were created and carried out by the men in my life.

I allowed them to dissect pieces of me, bit by bit, and I accepted the image of myself that was portrayed once their work was completed.

Every letdown, heartbreak, abandonment and deception by the men who have come and gone throughout my life, created excruciating wounds.

I did not inflict this pain upon myself, therefore I shouldn't have carried them with me, it should have never been a resemblance of who I was and who I am today because those lesions were not organic.

I was not born this way, I was subjected to these chapters of my life and it has taken me years to understand that those abrasions were burned into me because of the way a man made me feel.

I would go from this relationship to the next feeling even more insecure. What I didn't know was that wounds could have stayed behind and they could have healed, rather than being brought into my next relationship to tarnish it right from the get go.