I recently read the book Forever… by Judy Blume.  It’s obviously a book meant for adolescents, but I had never read it.  I have to admit that it really made me think- about first love and the choices we make when it comes to dealing with our past relationships.

Here’s a short synopsis of the book:  Katherine meets Michael at a party and they start talking.  They fall in love, they pledge forever, and Michael is Katherine’s first sexual experience.  Katherine’s parents send her off to summer camp and there she starts to fall for another guy.  Suddenly forever with Michael is something that she’s not sure she wants anymore.

The whole book made me think about my first love- mostly because we pledged forever to each other as well.  Thinking about it now, I admit that forever is harder than it sounds, especially when you don’t realize that maybe life will give you everything you want, but take away the one thing that matters most. My ex and I talked about it all- love, careers, marriage, and children…we wanted forever.  Perhaps it’s a rite of passage to pledge forever when you don’t really have a concept of just how long forever really lasts.  The last time I saw him I said, “We were stupid to be talking about marriage when we were 19 and 20.”  He said to me, “No, we were smart.  We were planning for our future.”

I have to admit that left me stumped-something that he hadn’t been able to do to me for years because I’d grown to know him so well.  Things had been back and forth between the two of us for many years- we were friends, lovers, nothing, back and forth, over and over.  We weren’t a formal couple again after our breakup, but we couldn’t seem to let go of each other.  Overall, what I took from what he said to me that night was that he didn’t regret anything that had happened between us, that once upon a time our feelings were true, and that, upon reflection, it’s something I should feel lucky I got to experience because most people will spend their entire life looking for what the two of us experienced together.

So here I stand at 25, looking back and making the choice not to regret any of what happened between us.  I’m making the decision to embrace all of it: the love, the memories, the heartache, and the amazing connection that was us.  I can look back and always know that at least once in my life I was truly in love and was loved in return.  I think that’s what forever really means…

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