learning to unlove you took me years

on first love, last letters, and learning to let go

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Part I: The Love Story

My first love showed up in an eleven year old boy who saw me deeper than anyone else I ever knew. That's not saying a lot, given I had only just finished a decade of life, but it felt special nonetheless.

My school life was entirely too toxic for any child to handle. I grew up in an insanely competitive school, and getting ahead was so prioritized that talking behind others' back, hateful rumors, and lies were deemed…normal. Simply as modes of leveling the playing field, as if the education of a hundred children was all just a game.

He came from a different school, and I was tasked with showing him around since we were in the same advanced classes. I immediately liked him. Something so charming, naïve, innocent, maybe. He didn't have his guard up like anyone else I'd known. His words seemed genuine, his intentions pure, his heart open.

First love or not, we all have that one special someone who held your heart so gently, teaching you what it meant to love and be loved, and then—sometimes without warning—crushed it in between their fingers.

It's an indescribable feeling, being introduced to something magical and then realizing you can't keep it. It’s like finally seeing the world for the beauty people say it is, being able to breathe easier, live happier, just for it all to revert back to its old gray mush.

For the first time in my short life, I didn't have to perform or compete or strategize my way through conversations. With him, I could just be. I could allow myself to be messy, to be vulnerable, to be real. He was the only person who made me feel truly safe, and when you're a child drowning in toxicity, safety becomes everything.

So I clung to him with the desperate intensity that only children possess. When you're eleven and you find something that makes the world feel less scary, you don't let go. You can't let go. Those feelings were reciprocated, which made it all feel more real, more permanent. We were each other's refuge, two kids who had found something seemingly pure in an impure world.

We were together for three years. It might not sound like much in adult terms, but when you're a child, three years is a lifetime. From eleven to fourteen, we grew up together, navigating the awkward maze of adolescence side by side. He was there when I got braces and the first time I dyed my hair, through the confusing transition from childhood to something that felt almost like adulthood. He was the first to know when I finally got my period, I was the first to know about his issues with his family. Our lives became so intertwined that I couldn't imagine existing without him.

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Part II: The Unraveling and the Healing

When it ended, it didn't just break my heart—it shattered my entire sense of self. I had never been sadder in my life, and at fourteen, that sadness felt infinite. It wasn't just losing him; it was losing the version of myself that existed only with him. I didn’t laugh as much anymore. I couldn’t find it in me to be trusting. All of those vulnerable, feeling qualities disappeared. I felt like I had lost a piece of my soul, and I didn't know how to be whole without it.

The heartbreak was all-consuming. I would cry until my eyes dried out, replay every memory until it felt like torture, wonder what I had done wrong, what I could have done differently. I wrote his name in my diary surrounded by question marks, pg-13 curse words and tear stains. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't focus on anything but the gaping hole where he used to be.

I was angry then. Spiteful. I wanted him to hurt the way I was hurting, wanted him to regret what he'd walked away from. I wanted to prove that letting me go was the worst mistake he'd ever made.

Heartbreak teaches you that you're stronger than you think you are. It forces you to discover who you are when you're not half of something else. As much as I sometimes wish it did, the healing didn't happen overnight. It took years, just like the title promises. Years of learning that my worth wasn't tied to being loved by him. Years of understanding that the safety I found in him needed to come from within me first.

Learning to unlove someone isn't about forgetting them or pretending they didn't matter. It's about loosening your grip on what was so you can make space for what could be.

The process was aggravatingly slow and nonlinear. Some days I felt free, like I had finally moved on, only to find myself crying over a song that reminded me of him the next week. I'll never forget this one day, maybe a year and a half later—I was just walking my dog in my neighborhood when this smell hit me out of nowhere, and I literally had to stop because it smelled exactly like him. The second I came home I ran up to my room and involuntarily cried in bed. Pain comes through in the small moments like those. And it was through moments like those that I began to understand that healing isn't about erasing the past (because frankly, that’s not possible)—it's about changing your relationship with it.

I learned to love again, differently this time. More carefully, but also more freely. Each person who came after taught me something new about love, about myself, about what I needed and what I could give. And slowly, the space he occupied in my heart grew smaller not because I loved him less, but because I had more love to give elsewhere.

That's how you learn to unlove someone: not by diminishing what they meant to you, but by expanding what love means to you.

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I've written versions of this letter in my head more times than I can count. I'll never send it—some things are meant to stay between you and your own healing. But maybe there's something to be said for putting these words somewhere they can exist, even if they never reach who they're meant for.

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Part III: A Letter I'll Never Send

Dear youknowwhoyouare,

I wonder sometimes if you remember us the way I do. Do you ever find yourself reminiscing about our past like I do? Back when your biggest worry was making sure you walked me to my locker everyday, and mine was whether you'd notice I wore the bracelet you said you liked?

Do you remember our inside jokes—the ones that made no sense to anyone else but sent us into fits of giggles (‘pebbles’ comes to mind)? I found the journal page where I wrote them all down recently when I was deep cleaning my room…it made me smile.

Do you remember the way we'd catch each other's eyes across the classroom whenever our teachers talked about love, about finding partners? When Mrs. Makaram told us she was pregnant and going on maternity leave, I remember us looking at each other in hope for that kind of future together. (Kinda crazy, considering we were barely teenagers).

I remember how you joined all my hobbies just to spend more time with me. Getting into the school play even though you'd never acted before, just because you knew I loved to sing and dance. Taking art class instead of speech and debate because you wanted to watch me in my element. You reshaped your world to include more of mine, and I felt so loved by that gesture, so seen.

I want you to know that I'm grateful now. I know that might sound strange, given how angry I was when it ended, how much I wanted you to regret leaving. But time has a way of softening the sharp edges of memory, and I can see it all now.

Thank you for showing me what it felt like to be seen, to be cherished, to be someone's first choice. Thank you for being my soft space in a world that felt too hard for someone so small. You taught me that love could be gentle, that hearts could be safe places, that I was worthy of affection.

And thank you for letting me go.

I understand now what I couldn't at fourteen—that we were growing into different people, that holding on would have meant holding us both back. You made the brave decision that neither of us had words for then. You chose our futures over our past, even when it broke us both.

I hope you're happy. I hope that you’ve found someone who sees you the way you saw me, who makes you feel as safe as you once made me feel. I hope your heart has healed from whatever pain letting me go caused you too.

You will always have a piece of me—that's not something I can take back, nor would I want to. But here's the beautiful thing I've learned: that piece grows smaller not because I love you less, but because I love more. Every person who has held my heart since has expanded it, stretched it, made room for new kinds of love, new kinds of healing.

We were children gambling with our time, but maybe that's all we were ever meant to be. Regardless, what we had was real, in its own twisted, childish, innocent way, and it was beautiful, and it taught me how to love fearlessly even after I learned how much love could hurt.

Learning to unlove you took me years, but learning to be grateful for you? That took even longer, and it was worth every moment of the journey.

Take care.

With love and gratitude for what was,
Jia