to my first love

to my first love,

i am sorry… i am not the same person anymore. i am not the same person you once loved, and i am not the same person who eventually grew into the person you started to love. i am not her anymore.
because i focus on me, and i do what makes me happy even if that means going to someone’s house or going to the beach and for the first time, not wearing shorts. even if that means i’m still not the cleanest person in the world and even if that means i wear things that i used to not usually wear. and as much as i know that it’s something you wouldn’t really have liked or approved—and as much as it used to pain me due to all the guilt i’d feel—i shake all of the negativity away because i am no longer yours and you no longer mine.

and to my first love, i have changed. and it is, many a time since we’ve parted, because of your existence in my life: the length of my nails after seeing your disgust, the style of my hair as the first step of my independence, the effort i put into my education because you ensured me that my career choice isn’t the most financially efficient decision. i have changed: the way i study and organize my notes after long amounts of time to myself, being able to explore more and more mediums to express my thoughts and emotions and more importantly, the way i live. i have changed for the better.

i used to live on time, and i used to live on waiting—waiting for the eight hours ‘til you’d be here, waiting ‘til nine at night on the days you weren’t, waiting ‘til the internet got better, ‘til the time you came back home, ‘til the time we would see each other once again. and most of all, it took me four years of waiting for you and me to be together, only to be sequenced with more waiting, yet again. and you, too, suffered through the same thing i did because in a relationship like what we had, there is no such thing as just one person’s fault.

but i’ve changed because once upon a time i used to wait for you. i used to wait to feel the tangibility of the justification to my happiness… but in most cases one must pursue happiness to receive it someday. and to my first love, i once had that happiness with you. but, my first love, you and i both know we were being drowned by time and distance, too.

and because we’ve waited for far too long and lengths too far for the both of us, i have changed, just as you have. i don’t wait, i’m quick to the point, i’m sure of myself nowadays. because as wonderful as you were to me and as wonderful as i was to you, you brought out my flaws and encouraged me to be better for the next one who comes along, for the next person who can handle what you couldn’t. it is this person who will be with me because this time i will be the person who can handle what i wasn’t able to before.

to my first love, this is a celebration of you and what you have done to me—an epitome of “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”—and for this i thank you for showing me that i’ll always have potential to do better and more importantly, be a better person than i once was.