As a girl in high school, one of the big things on my mind is the excitement of a relationship. That rush I get from looking down the hallway and seeing him already looking at me, or the sick feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I think about losing him. Relationships are hard, but we throw ourselves into them anyway.

Society likes to tell us that no matter how much we love him, the relationship won’t make it past high school, but being as hard-headed and in love as I was, I believed my ex and I were the exception, not the rule; obviously, I was wrong.

When we broke up, I felt like my whole world was falling apart. People like to tell girls that they don’t need a man to make them happy, and they’re right. We don’t, but when you’ve spent so long relying on someone, and loving them, it feels like they’re wrong.

After our break up, I got my fill of couch time and Netflix. My dad kept telling me that I shouldn’t be upset, that I deserved better than him anyway, but I loved him. Everything that my dad was saying to me, whether it was true or  not, didn’t matter because I was hurting. Every promise and every “I love you” he ever said to me  slowly faded away and left little pieces of my heart behind for me to pick up.

Dad kept telling me that enough was enough. I needed to pull myself together and stop letting everybody, mainly him, see that he still had a hold over me. As much as I wanted to ignore him and heal in my own way and on my own time, I knew he was right.

I let myself be in pain for a while, but I had to pull myself back up and try to remember who I was without him again. It was time.

I started small. I went out with my friends, changed my statuses on social media, deleted pictures and tried to get some closure.

Everything came pretty easily except for the closure. He couldn’t give me the closure I needed, and it was too hard on me to press for it from him. Really, the only thing that gave me any kind of assurance that everything was going to be okay was God.

I clung to Him with all that I had left. And slowly, He built me back up to where I am today. I may not be 100 percent over my ex, but that’s okay. He was my first love, and I was his.

People like to tell us all the time that we need to just forget about him, let it go, move on with our lives. But those memories are going to stay with us for a lifetime. We’re never going to forget our first love, and we shouldn’t.

  Relationships, whether in high school or not, are hard; nobody is going to say that they aren’t. But when they do get hard, when we need somebody to help us through it, turn to the people who have always been there. We have friends, family and most importantly, God.