1. Love at 16
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/love-at-16
Love is interesting. It’s exotic, it’s foreign to us, yet it’s so familiar and comforting. When
was the first time you fell in love? Did he love you back? Did she? Were you fifteen,
sixteen? Maybe it came later, when you are wandering the world alone in your twenties,
tired of years passing by with no hand to hold. I was in love at sixteen. I was in love at
seventeen, and I was in love at eighteen. But I was a different person at sixteen. My life
was different at eighteen. And at nineteen, I found myself alone. But nothing compares
to love at sixteen.
Love at sixteen is engulfing. It encompasses you, takes over your small (you don’t realize
it’s small yet) world. The first boy I loved caught me by storm. He had dark brown eyes
that spoke to me in another language. His eyelashes grew longer than mine. Love at
sixteen is exciting, it’s happy. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s overwhelming. Love at sixteen is
pure. It’s love notes and after-school kisses and breakfast dates. Love at sixteen is
dangerous.
Love at seventeen is settled. It’s secured, it’s comfortable, it’s truly happy. Love at
seventeen is meeting families, long drives, nightly phone calls. Love at seventeen is a
little more grown, a little bit more developed and familiar. Love at seventeen is
beautiful. It’s endless and free and fulfilling. Love at seventeen is safe. It’s poems and
pictures and morning kisses that tastes like coffee. Love at seventeen is boundless. Love
at seventeen is right after you jumped off of the diving board after debating for so long
to do it. When you’re suddenly in the deep end of the pool and you’re scared to drown,
but then you realize you’re swimming—no, you’re floating.
Love at eighteen is hard. It’s boundaries and questions and conversations. It’s
applications and acceptance letters and tears. Love at eighteen is the passage of time.
It’s suitcases and change. Love at eighteen is holding on. It’s goodbye letters and sad
hugs and nights that end as quick as they begin. Love at eighteen aches. Love at eighteen
is life. It’s decisions you don’t want to make, words you don’t want to say, and things you
don’t want to see. Love at eighteen makes you want love at sixteen back.
Your first love is thrilling, humbling, and crushing. If you’re lucky, your first love is your
last. If you’re lucky, you never have to go through the loss of a love. If you’re lucky,
you’ve never had to look the person you love in the eye and tell them that things have
changed. Sometimes it’s not feelings that change. Sometimes it’s just life—time and
circumstances and distance. And these things are out of our control. If you’re lucky, and
your first love is your last, you’ll never have tobreak someone’s heart like I did. You’ll
never know the feeling of knowing the person you love is now walking the earth without

2. you. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have totake down pictures, or say goodbye to families,
or watch the person you love love somebody else.
But you know what? I am lucky. I am lucky to know what love is, to have my first little
taste of it at sixteen, at seventeen, at eighteen. At nineteen, I am alone—but I am not
lonely. I am alone because I have chosen to be. I am alone because at sixteen, it is too
easy tolose yourself in somebody else. But at eighteen, everything changes, and that’s
okay. At eighteen, I was able to separate myself from the very thing I thought was saving
me. But nobody can save you. The happiness and security my boyfriend gave me was
great—but unreliable. The happiness and security you can only ever truly rely on lies
within yourself. At eighteen, without the thing I thought I could never live without, I am
strong. I am happy, because I have chosen to be. Granted, it’s taken me awhile to get
here. The break is never clean, and I still wake up every day missing the days I was in
love. But I have fallen in love with other things, things I have always loved but forgotten.
I have fallen in love with writing, with music, with the free space in my mind, and in my
day that’s not filled by another. This time and space is filled by me, by my family, by my
life. My first love did not betray me; he did not cheat me or mistreat me. He only treated
me in the softest and most loving of ways. But I’m here to say that’s okay. Because at
eighteen, you need to love yourself enough to love somebody else.