Day 74: It would be today

It's always the days that you don't plan to spend a lot of time on something, that you have to spend a lot of time on something.

Day 10 of the 30 Day Challenge: "Discuss your first love and first kiss."

Wow. I wonder how many kids have answered this and then later on down the road they'll go "Wel, they weren't really my first love. . . more like my first crush."

*SHUDDER*

Anywho, I'll discuss these out of order, if there really is an intended order.

So first kiss.

At Evangel, I had a habit of. . . "helping" students write their papers for laundry money. $2 for a paper, and $5 for an A, and they were almost always A's. So it's basically $5 a paper. It was also a good way to get spending money, besides selling your iPod touch you customized to say "Put music to our troubles / and we'll dance them away." (The / denoting the two lines) You can't sell an iPod Touch every semester, so I picked up papers when people on my floor started complaining about them. I had the time. Papers are easy and I was staying up late and so I did papers.

Then I kinda started getting interested in the Moor (she wasn't black, but think of a synonym for the alternate definition of "moor" and you'll have the name) and she turned me down the day before V-Day, which kinda sucked; no lie. Well I was complaining about the whole deal to one of her friends, and me and that friend got talking, and I was in an emotionally volatile state. Somehow it came up that I did homework assignments for money. She told me she wouldn't give me money, but she'd give me a hug. I immediately upped the ante. I wanted a kiss. I was 18 and 2/3rds of the way to 19, and I could get a hug any day of the week. If we're going physical, I wanted a damn kiss. That was shortly before 10. The assignment was due at midnight. So we got out to her car, and we talked about theater kissing (which I had barely just started, exactly a month before. Jan 16th to Feb 16th) and then she asked me how that went.

An hour later I emerged from the backseat of her vehicle, and she got a 100 on that assignment. 3 weeks later, we ended up having sex, and that kinda went into a downward spiral from there. But that's further beyond first kiss. First kiss was the front seat of a Jeep, Feb 16th, in payment for a homework assignment.

That's a lovely story to tell your kids.

Now first love. . . This one is a toughie. I've told five girls that I've loved them. First two didn't mean it, as I would define it now. Under the old Stendhalian philosophy everything counts basically because its the seed of love. But I don't follow Stendhalian philosophy now, so first two, didn't really mean it. Was I enthralled? Heck yea. First two relationships at 16, set a few firsts, it was pretty sweet. But that's not what makes up love.

Third, I'll come back to.

Fourth, Jace, was the first kiss. And there were some seeds of love there, but there was something fundamentally wrong with the relationship. That fundamental wrong led to doubts, and doubts led to the love dying a slow death. That and the fact God kinda kicked us in the collective rear and said "Move on!". Doubt really does kill love, by the way. Doubt is a lack of trust. But I won't get on my soapbox here.

Fifth, is Kate. That was pretty recent actually, and at first I was little unsettled sharing it because I was like "Hey broski, you need to be taking it slow. Telling her 6 months in (officially, its only 3, that 3 month anniversary being today) seems a bit soon. Besides, we still got a year and a half to go (Dearness). So 86 that one!" Well I shared it anyways, because there are certain times where one will feel that something needs to be said, and so I did. There are seeds of love, and they are growing. It'll be interesting to see where we go from here, but I was told that Love was growing together in a very well worded coherent discussion that was simultaneously unlengthy. (Anti-Logorrheas United!) And a good point was made. So right now, we're moving along and learning as we go along, and the seeds that we planted back in August are still growing.

But this is about first love isn't it? And that's the tricky part. What qualifies as first love? Is it when you love a person for the first time, because that's a sticky notion in itself. Eh screw it. I'm just going to assume that's what's meant. I already told you that 1+2, upon review, I did not love. Fourth, could've loved, might've loved, but it didn't last long, because God said it shouldn't exist. So, it was really dead before it blossomed. Five, I'm saying I do love. But what about 3?

Well, 3 is the one who told me that love is linked to growing together. And we had the chance to grow together. There was a point in time between 2 and 4, where we talked. I think we exchanged Myspace messages for the better part of two months before I asked out her out to go see Wall*E, which was amazing. But I really liked this girl. She was / is everything my parents ever told me to look for. But due to extenuating circumstances, it never happened. After some time, I moved onto 4, and then that went south and I spent a good long while evaluating my life, including what I should be looking for. Feelings for 3 hit me in such a way that I felt they hadn't left, so I tolerated them until I couldn't take it any longer so I took a rose, some red ribbon, ink and paper, and I packaged what was in the end a 3 page letter (11 pages until I pared it down. There are some times where I can run long, believe it or not.) and I left it on her porch on a day that I knew she was home and visiting from college. Had she not brought a thousand friends home with her, I would've given it to her in person, but since she had brought a gazillion friends home, I decided it would be best to leave it be and I left it on her porch.

Well, naturally, when you don't talk to someone for the better part of a year and then you leave them [what is probably my greatest work to date], and offer to court them, they usually say no. So she said no. There was a lot of grace in her response, including reasons why she was saying no. She wasn't harsh about it. Upon re-reading it just last week to gather the smallest quote I could to help out a friend, I'm shocked to find that I still think it is probably the best way to have responded no. In my letter to her, I used the phrase "I do not (yet) claim to love you", which eventually became the blog title for Day 44. I basically straight up told her, "I do not love you." Yet in her response, she said that it was troubling that I said that I loved her. Which is kinda funny, because I told that to everyone but her. But I suppose in telling her the things I ended up saying in my letter, it would be easy to make that assumption. Besides, there is no reason to correct her, I have told everyone, and probably will continue to do so, that she was my first love. However, she disagrees with me on whether or not it was really love.

So 3 or 5. One of the two is my first love.

Wow. Talk about a post.