When I was young – 19 or 20 years old, just a kid, really – I liked this boy named Dave. We volunteered at the same place and he just seemed really lovely. I’d never had a real boyfriend before and I didn’t know what it would be like, but I thought having someone like Dave as my boyfriend would be so nice.
We spent our Saturday mornings tutoring Sudanese refugees and when it was over we would stand around with the other volunteers having lunch and chatting. Dave was so sweet and funny. Sometimes the two of us would wander off away from the group and talk about how we were both studying history at university, or compare stories about our ridiculous siblings.
One day I got there early and I was helping to set up. I was standing in front of the big stationery cupboard with my back to the room when Dave came up behind me and gently squeezed my shoulder to say hello. I spun around and blushed when I saw him. He’d never touched me before; I’d never touched him.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
And we both just smiled at each other for far too long.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the touch all week, and every time I did my heart would feel like it was expanding out of my chest. Just one brush of his hand and I was a giddy mess. It seems funny to think that I hadn’t realised I’d liked him before that, and even when I did I didn’t know what to do about it. But that one touch… I barely needed anything more than that to be happy forever.
He asked me out not long after. It was subtle and I wasn’t even sure it was a date (a date! I’d never been on a proper date before) but let me tell you, I didn’t sleep for the five days leading up to it. I could barely eat. It was so utterly, wholly amazing, the thought of sitting next to him at a play, eating dinner with him, walking down the street with him… I couldn’t conceive of such excitement and pleasure. He kissed me that night and though I’d kissed people before and even had sex, nothing in my whole life had compared to the way my stomach and heart felt following that kiss. It was as if a future of pure joy had opened up in front of me and all I could see before was unknown but certain happiness.
Dave and I fell in love. We went out for a few years and even moved to Kenya together to volunteer when we finished uni. It was all meant to be so perfect. And maybe it was, in its own way. Maybe it was all it was ever meant to be. Feelings faded and I began to question not what it had been, but what it could be. This was years ago now and I don’t talk to Dave much anymore. He’s going to have a baby in the next few months and I’m with someone much more suited to my older self who continues to make me deliriously happy in a way I stopped feeling with Dave. But I can never forget how it felt back then, that time he touched my shoulder, or the first time we ever kissed.
There is something so pure and untouchable about the first time you fall in love. It might not even be the time you fall hardest, or the time you are happiest, but it is unlike anything else. I know a lot of people on this site are younger than I am and going through this now. Even though I am so happy now and so sure of my relationship, I still sometimes think I would give anything to be back there again, going through this all for the first time.
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- anonymous lover
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