I'm often confused by love. There's the Romantic definition of love, the idealized True Love that seems to have become what we expect to hear about when we hear the word. I think it's a concept that's unfairly reduced in English and also blown way out of proportion.

To answer your question, I met my first love on the first day of 5th grade. I remember that we were all milling around, looking for our seating assignments. For us, 5th grade was the first grade in the Middle School, as the school district covers three towns, each with its own Elementary School, so there were a lot of new faces to me. Anyway, I saw a friend and we looked for our seats together and on our way we ran into two girls he knew. One of them was real butch and into sports. It turned out that all the time we spent calling her a lesbian (because we were 10 and all manly girls were automatically "lesbians") she really was one. Anyway, the other little girl was so beautiful I forgot how to talk for a minute or two.

Reality came rushing back as her words started to get through to me. I realized that she was making fun of my friend and me for associating with him. Long story short, we kept ending up in the same classes and we were always making fun of each other and drawing pictures of monsters and finding ways to freak her younger sister out. My friends kept telling me that they thought she liked me, but I just brushed it off because we were friends, even though (not so) secretly, I wanted to ask her out so badly.

But, it never happened. Every time I got up the courage, she'd just started dating someone else and in the meantime I was off doing my own thing until eventually we went to college far away from each other.

We still correspond every once in a while. Last year, we ended up going to the beach together and when I saw her, I felt like that 10 year old kid again. If we ever ended up living in the same area, I'd like to think that I have it in me to hang out with her again and maybe even ask her out, but then again, maybe the memory of her and how she was the first one to trigger those emotions in me are enough. My love life has been pretty . . . tumultuous, I guess you could say. If I'm an accomplished artist in any medium, it has to be making a mess of things with girls. I promise, I'm pretty spectacular at it. I don't say that to be bleak though, I think that's the natural contrarian in me, always looking for a story or a poem and ending up in an adventure. Well, except lately.