On the website http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com today’s quote of the day is “The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end” by Benjamin Disraeli.  As a high school teacher, this is something I can relate to on a daily basis.

Practically everyday, I come across a female student crying or talking to her friends about her relationship drama.  Some actually think their high school boyfriend or girlfriend is “The One.”   I remember feeling that way in high school.

Now that I am older, I understand why we refer to your “first love” as “puppy love.”  I thought I was “in love” with my best guy friend in high school.  We were perfect on paper.  We grew up together, our families got along, our parents adored the other and we had similar family backgrounds (we were both Italian and Polish).  He knew me better than anyone and he was so easy to talk to.  So naturally, I thought I was in love with him.  And being the overly dramatic teenager that I was, I told him (in a very long letter) . . . then I moved to the other side of the country to attend college.

I was a teenager in love with the idea of being in love with my best guy friend.  In my favorite books and TV shows, the female lead always discovered that her “soul mate” was her best guy friend.  That is what I wanted.  It was the perfect story: growing up together, falling in love and growing old together.

But the reality was that I did love him (as a friend) but he wanted to stay in our home town while I wanted to travel the world.  I have lived all over the country while he stayed at home, he has his dream job and he is married with a son.  I discovered that loving someone and being “in love” are two different things.  I was “in love” with an idea, not him.

It wasn’t until the end of my Freshman year of college that I realized that my love for my best guy friend was simply “puppy love.”  This was when I met Big and he turned my life upside down.  He was my “first love.”  But like the quote says, it was never meant to last.

Every chapter in a book has to end so the next chapter can start to continue the story.  These two men, my puppy love and my first love, were merely chapters in my book of life.

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