A side note should be added here: you can never convince someone to love you. It is something that happens with time, and as much as I felt like everything was perfect the first time, it wasn't. He wasn't. It took another nineteen months after he broke my heart for us to find each other again, for our friendship to grow, and for this amazing thing to bloom. And I will get to that story when I get there: but first, after the first guy I ever allowed myself to truly trust broke up with me via text during my art mock, I went back to the drawing board.
Being fifteen was bizarre. I used to befriend people who I spoke to on the internet. At one point in my life some of the people I spoke to most outside of school were people I'd never, or barely, met. These people have come and gone mainly, one has stuck around, although I'm not entirely sure why, and I sometimes wish that friendship could still be that simple. Just logging in, typing until the small hours of the morning, and logging out, and it could be hours or weeks until you'd chat again, but it didn't matter that much.
I remember the first time I ever got into texting a boy, and I was not very sneaky with my phone, as it was huge and not easily hidden under my text book. Luckily it was only confiscated once. And so, my msn friend list grew larger, and then MySpace happened, and eventually Facebook happened too. But first, there was MSN. I still sign in occasionally just to look at the girl I used to be. It's pretty funny.
Anyway, after a few two week relationships which I can barely remember now, I met a Barnaby: he liked me, and we did some rather funny things together. We went on a date, our first official date, on his sixteenth birthday. That night we had sex in an alley. Very weird, and I wouldn't advise anyone else try it. Especially when only sixteen. We used to hang out a lot as a group of friends, and be quite inappropriate in front of people. Once, he proudly showed Ross and Sam the lump in his trousers. They were not amused. Pretty sure Sam was scarred for life. The time we spent together was good and fun, and then something weird happened. Jack. I met a guy who went against all my rules. He was good looking and charming, yet quiet and reserved, nervous and shy, and musically brilliant and sexy because of it. He was literally everything. I kept spending time with him accidentally, and I knew I wanted him, but I didn't want to lose Barnaby. I can't remember breaking up with him, but I did.
Then it was magical: I'd sacrificed this amazing guy for someone more amazing, and more than anything I could have dreamed. He even had muscles. I'd never been with a guy with muscles before. It was very exciting. About three weeks, maybe five, I can't remember, of good times ended suddenly. One Saturday morning I knew as soon as I stood on the bus and saw Charlotte and Ed chatting quietly alone that something had happened. Charlotte told me later that day that my perfect guy had kissed a girl last night in Southwold. I was crushed: I thought he was different from the others. I thought I'd finally found the perfect guy - turns out he just wasn't perfect for me. After that Barn and I became friends again, then got back together for another two months, and eventually it all fell to pieces when a friend stuck her nose into our relationship. This I should have learned from - never date a guy you've already broken up with. It would have saved me so much hassle later on in life. But alas, the only thing I learned from all this is that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. My heart told me to do certain things, and I knew that even if my heart wanted one day of happiness, it could lead to so much destruction, that it wasn't always worth it. Poignant that I learned that at age sixteen, yet repeated it almost perfectly four years later.
Some lessons in life you have to learn twice, or even three times, and even then you might break your own rules one day because you think the grass finally is greener, and that perfect person has finally found you. But that's a story for another day.