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This is one of the most sensitive of all topics, I think for anyone. Few people are not still driven to tears by the memories, the smells, the cologne or perfume of that person… that once was so special… so dear…the First.

Once upon a time of need, desire or hearts-discontent, this person made life worth living.

For those in disagreement over how they could possibly have made such a mistake, to those who knew with finality that their first sweetheart did in fact not make the cut… the emotional reality remains: that it hurts.

We learnt so much of our unpreparedness, our immaturity, our vague ideas of what life and love were meant to be, when we exited such an entanglement, but somehow, it had the potential to cleave bare our hearts to bitterness and mourning…and doubt that we ever will find the fabled Mr. or Mrs. Right…

Not to mention the number and double-take effect it had on any future potential connections or entanglements.

It may shake the foundations of our upbringing to the point that these were perhaps still the soft cement of new foundations…but thereafter the blazened, hardened rock-solid value we hold and uphold, a plumb-line we inadvertently will whip out to judge all future entanglements.

After a while in the pit of despair – however long our hearts spent pining for the fractured ideal that was so fresh, so idealistic, so perfect… the faults start showing, also the reality starts dawning that it can never be ‘that way’ again.

In the aftermath, our hearts raw with emotion, we instinctively start seeing the how, the Who’s Who in this carnage of feelings and regret. If we are brutally honest, we may be guilty of having filled our minds with ephiphereal fluff – the stuff romcoms are made of – and henceforth are led to acknowledge the pain in the wake of the departure of such a wonderful novelty, we may realize we undervalued it, or mismanaged it; we wonder if this is all relationships can do? Make us live for every next kiss, or dread a lifetime without…?

We may discard the plumbline and the ‘lessons’ it taught, or embrace it, and hold lightly future entanglements; but however we choose to deal with it, if we let the past shape our charater and had the grandiosity to overcome the he-said she-said skirmishes part and parcel of so many aftermaths in this war of the heart, the bitterness and hopelessness… had the clarity to forgive and get a grip on our emotional bearings that are lubricated by tears, running on the endless spial of the lingerings of love that used to be…

We can continue on to be noblehearted. Grant others the grace not afforded to us, or continue to sink deeper into the immaturity and blindness that sunk us here in the first place. We realize that we get to choose-even in this.

Whether we chose to make this person a symbol of our ‘not-aloneness’ or raised them up without fault to resemble the ideal in our inner temples of reverence for mankind, we did not even think that such idolatry could lead to so much pain. We did not even realize that wherever there are pedestals – there are bound to be downfalls… if not for relationships that come through grace, out of grace and founded on real love, in the limited sense we are able to experience and value it, of course. 

So, in liu of all the mistakes we made in keeping the balance, keeping our respect or dealing fairly with ourselves, and others, the tears we cried along with all those who have ever suffered the loss of first love, we still choose whether we heal, how deeply and thoroughly, and how deeply and lightly we live our lives in the future.

My prayer is that we learn well these aching lessons, return our emotions to a calm reality, conclude the mourning and proceed. Newborn into a world to love and care, protect and guide with the upgraded skills of discerment and clarity we have acquired.

Marietjie