on the horizon

ph: Jessica Neuwerth + Rihanna Wurman

overdosed

ph: Viola Cangi

You know when love is just beautiful? When you find someone who’s creases in the palms of their hands perfectly match up with yours? When that person’s smile is like the sunrise to your happiness? Just the mere thought of them creates a tidal wave of butterflies in the pit of your stomach, but in a good way. When you awake every morning to either their scent right beside you, or a sweet text message telling you everything you want to hear. When that person makes you feel like the only human being existing in their world and you just feel an endless supply of love, like nothing, not a single thing can bring you down?

I can’t tell you about that kind of love. I can, however, tell you all about the dark side of love. The kind of love that feels like the most poisonous, addictive drug that courses through your insides and rots away your very core. The kind of love that leaves you both numb, a hopeless void, and at the same time as contradictory as it sounds, in excruciating pain. When you find yourself sitting in your dark bedroom at 3am, just staring in a type of catatonia caused by racing thoughts of how it all ended up here? When you become all too familiar with the taste of your own tears and you just bleed your eyes dry until you can’t cry anymore. The type of love that has you shaking in bed, anxious if they’re going to walk away this time (again) for the millionth time. Wondering, in a constant battle with yourself, if this is your entire fault, if this is what you deserve? It’s like heaven and hell in comparison. That’s how I imagine it anyway. Some people are just blessed with love, with a perfect person, with flowers growing from their fingertips, and warmth dancing around them. But some people are cursed with love, with swollen eyes, and heavy hearts, and thorns breaking through their skin.

I have never been addicted to any substance, but I imagine that it’s exactly the same really. You meet this person who you think is so right for you, so intriguing and you’re excited to try this person. That’s your first hit, your first snort, your first injection, your first sip; the first time the drug flows through your bloodstream and it’s euphoria, it’s perfect. It’s warm and it’s magnificent and it makes you feel things you’ve never in a million years felt. You want more, no, you need more. You need them; their body, their smell, their voice, their sound, their presence, their feeling, their promises, you need it all until you become greedy. You become addicted to this person, essentially your own personal drug, designed just for you, baby. And that’s when the darkness comes. This drug isn’t all you thought it was but you’re desperate. It’s not good for you anymore. It’s arguments and miscommunications and not understanding what you want. It’s fights and broken glass and bruises and lust. It’s addiction. It’s adrenaline and screams and sobbing into your pillow. It’s begging and pleading and promising you’ll do anything for more, just more of him, anything as long as you don’t take away the drug. You can’t live without it and by now the scariest and saddest thing of all has happened: you’ve lost yourself. The single, most important thing- your own self- has been lost in this addiction. You’ve lost friends and family and people look at you with pity, they start to notice the sunken eyes and your shrinking frame. They notice that you’ve become less of a person and more of a ghost, that they’re speaking to you but you aren’t hearing them. The world spins and whirls around you in colors and fast flashes and it makes you so f*cking nauseated, so you choose to just stay in your bed, the only safety you know anymore. Eventually, you start your rehab. You cut them out, you detox their existence, they disappear and so do your cravings. But it doesn’t last for long does it? Because they always, always come back. A text message from him, a “hey how have you been?”, a drunken phone call, an “I miss you”, a night of sex…whatever it is and he’s back in your system and god, you forgot how good this drug was, and before you know it you’re sucked right back into this disgusting, vicious cycle until you’re left realizing that this drug that you need so badly, it doesn’t need you back- it just uses you, it just plays with your head to get what it wants. And you’re right back in the darkness, sitting in your bedroom, dragging on a cigarette with mascara melted all over your face and palms, sobbing, hating yourself for letting that drug back in, for believing that this drug would finally love you the way you loved it, for hoping that just this once you’d have your heaven.

But let me tell you something. You will never find your heaven if you stay in your hell and those thorns will never turn to flowers if you stay out of the sunlight.

I’ve spent the last year and a half, chasing after an ex boyfriend who left me and has since lead me to hell and back. He’s used me and blamed me, he’s never thought he was wrong, he’s bounced between me and other girls and never once apologized. He’s made me feel like I was nothing, worthless, and never good enough. He’s hardened my heart and I’ve cried a sea’s worth of tears over him- and that’s not even the half of it. I’ve walked away countless times just to let him back in when he comes back around, because this boy is my drug. Can I even call it love? Probably not. But I can’t let go. I wish I were strong enough, but I’m drained, I’m exhausted, I’ve overdosed and sometimes I feel like I’m already dead.

There’s a quote that goes: “I would have followed him to hell if he asked me to, and with all he put me through, maybe I did.”

Maybe I did.

fallen like a fool

ph: Georgia Peach + weheartit

for two weeks

ph: Arturo Oliva Pedroza

I woke up in the grey of a London morning beside you, a stranger who was wrapping himself around me like we’d been lovers for years. Your face intruding mine, stubble on my cheek, forcing me to breath in the booze-spiked air you exhaled soundlessly. I flipped from panic to calm as my body got used to you quickly, the prickles growing kinder on my cheek, your weight becoming reassuring.

I left your house to go to work, earlier than I needed to. I didn’t want you to wake up and become of this world again. I didn’t want you to feel the shame of your unguarded sleep with a stranger, I wanted to leave you in a liminal state, half unconscious, half purring awake.

I slipped out of your bed, your arms resisted for a second then let me go. You offered to let me out, I smiled. You wrapped yourself in the big white cover that had held up both, a sleepy face with a docile smile, doing up my dress, leading me to the elevator, hugging me in it and enveloping me back into the covers.

Ice cold air hit me as we reached the corridor, you seemed awake for the first time that morning. The mood was on the brink of shifting so I kissed you and ran away.

We didn’t meet for two weeks but we messaged every day. For each flirty or filthy message there was a soft and questioning, one you asked about my family, my Christmas, my life. Sometimes you left two kisses, sometimes a small one, sometimes none.

New Year came and you asked me to spend it with you. It was a mistake but I said yes. I waited at the bar for you, so nervous I felt sick, and watched you from afar. You looked confused, looking for a girl you’d only dated once. So I waved. You came over, we drank, you asked me questions, you touched my knee, my shoulder, my face, and I fell for you.

We moved on into the night, from swanky bar to bar until their formal limits could no longer house our erratic desires. You told me you wanted fireworks so we ran through the streets of London to the bridges, me barefoot, then on your back, with five minutes until midnight. We kissed under the explosions, you held my hand, I had never been happier.

We woke up together the next day, in a hotel, with sore heads. You looked as beautiful but there was a change and we watched trash TV in relative silence. We reassured each other about the fun that was had, but neither seemed convinced. We skipped brunch and went our separate ways, to two different train stations on the same block.

You didn’t message, I tried not to cry. You wrote three days later, hoping my week was OK. I got excited and sent you too much love for one message, a written invite to dinner, a tacit invite to love me. You never replied.

And yet I loved you, for two weeks, or two meetings. I loved you in my own psychotic way. With no more than one night to mourn you, exorcising you from my heart with tears and tunes, tomorrow I start again.

keep going

ph: Bohemian Blau + weheartit

i took a chance

ph: Marija Strajnic

My best friend and I moved to New York three years ago. We were young and looking for adventure and were tired of boring, small Norway. I was going to study art, just for fun, didn’t want to study something heavy. We felt like true adventurers. Bold as hell, moving from something as safe and secure as Norway to something big and scary as NY.

Then I met a boy. No, not a boy – a man. I was twenty and he was thirty. The age difference didn’t bother me too much though. He was a lawyer, busy with his work and didn’t have time for such a thing as a girlfriend. So we kept it on a casual level. First it started out as a physical thing (and may I say, gosshh…!!). He was very good-looking. Strong, tall, well-dressed and wealthy are good keywords to describe him. He’d spend the night at my place, or I at his. But not much more than that.

After a month or so we took the “next step”. Ordering pizza, watching movies, hanging out. Turned out we had a lot in common and there was never any awkward silence. What can I say, one thing turned to another. Before we knew it we were going out, acting like a couple, but not being one. For months we did this, and I never questioned what we were or where we were going. I’d learn that the easiest thing to lose something is to want it too badly, so I didn’t want to scary him away. Besides, being the “cool, relaxed” girl who didn’t care about things such as labels was feeling good… for a while at least.

I opened up to him in a way I had never done to anyone before. I told him things I didn’t even tell my best friend (who btw moved back after 6 months, she missed Norway too much), and he never judged me or made me feel uncomfortable. And he did the same. I knew we had some sort of connection (God, that sounds lame), and he knew it too. I felt so secure with him. He was my everything.

I realized I loved him. We were lying in bed, he had him arms around me, kissing. We had done that a thousand times before, and yet there I realized it, out of the blue. I asked him what we were, and I remember him answering “We’re you and I. Isn’t that enough?” I don’t know why that hit me so hard. “Is this all we’ll ever be?” I asked. He wouldn’t give me more. He wasn’t looking for more, simply didn’t want more either. I saw this cold, feelingless side of him for the first time. It was like he was someone else. I didn’t recognize him. I deserve more. So I broke it off. And it hurt. Hurt like hell. I don’t have words for how much it hurt. I thought he was going to fight for me. I thought I meant more to him. I thought he was my soulmate. And I can’t really say that he broke my heart either, cause I did this to myself. I broke my own heart.

A month or so later, I saw him in a café. I was there with two friends, and then I saw him sitting in the corner, with a girl. He had seen me before I saw him. He looked sad in a strange way. His face was tense. But it was him. I panicked, left my friends and practically ran home. I ran home and cried. It still hurt. And it hurt like hell, all over again.

The next day he was sitting outside my building when I got back from school. And I remember his words precisely: “I love you. I’ve loved you since you fell going UP the stairs and we laughed ourselves to death. You are everything to me. You scare me, challenge me and still make me happier than I’ve ever been. I didn’t know how lost I was until I lost you”. Then he asked for another chance, and I was horrified that he might cause me that pain again, but I took a chance and gave him one.

After that I was his girlfriend and he was my boyfriend. He came with me to Norway on vacations, I met his family. We moved in together. We were insanely in love – and still are. A week ago, he asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes. We both cried. I don’t have a doubt that he is the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.

"Man kan ikke beskytte seg mot sorg uten samtidig å beskytte seg mot glede"


- Lena

without you

ph: Alex Mazurov + weheartit

how you can tell when it’s true love

ph: Viola Cangi

Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it’s true love, and I think the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don’t heal, and it’s too damned late.

I loved you because you observed me as no one has, in my silence, you captured my habits, and quirks and still loved me. Last summer meant so much to me. More than you can ever imagine. And when you left I was a wreck. The letters I sent I tried to seem okay but I wasn't, I cried every night and every day I would wait for you to come back. In our time together you claimed a special place in my heart, one I’ll carry with me forever and that no one can replace. I believe that memories can have a physical almost living presence, and the times we shared are the best I've got. When I close my eyes I can see your face, when I walk it’s almost as if I can feel your hand in mine. Those things are still real to me, but where they once brought comfort, now they leave me with an ache. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you. Every time I saw someone with a crew cut, I’d feel my heart start beating faster, I knew it wasn't you but I wanted it to be you.

I fell in love you when we were together, I fell more in love with you when we were apart. I think that is dumb of me to say because while I was falling you were being hardened, trained, and sculpted into a person that I didn’t know. But I guess if you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly but it’s still worth it.

I never planned on falling in love with you, and in a different way your family, I always thought it to be unnecessary and messy. I learned the hard way that I was right.

I often remember our intimate moments together, the way we shared ourselves completely I feel as if that time has permanently linked our souls. I never opened myself up to anyone like that, and I hope I never have to do that again. I hope that you are the only one who knows each and every one of my secrets and fears, I hope that no one else hears my voice telling them that I love them when I first wake up or that I fall asleep in almost every movie theater. I hope that no one knows that you twitch when you sleep. I hope that no one comes to know the sound you make when a certain spot on your neck is kissed or that you might be the perfect man.

I miss you, whenever something funny happens you’re the person I want to tell. I want to make dinner for you and buy birthday cake ice cream because I saw it in the store and remembered it is your favorite. I want to fight with you, and explain, in depth, why the Red Sox are better than the Yankees. I want to pretend to be interested in your video games and kiss you goodnight every single night. You and I shared something wonderful and I never want to forget that. You are truly one of a kind.

You’re thoughtful and honest, a true gentleman, but more than that you are the first man I ever truly loved and no matter what the future brings, you always will be, and I know that my life is better for it.

I love you, always.

embrace it

ph: Gemma Bou + weheartit

i forgot about myself

ph: andrenzo

It's 2 years now. 2 years and 22 days. and I'm 22 now.

It started immediately, we met each other, we started to sleep in one bed after one week. We just knew this is it and this is us. Everything was just perfect and actually it's still perfect, isn't it?

He is my first boyfriend, first sex, first sharing bed, first living together, making breakfasts and dinners and spending 24/7. And I was so fucking happy, that couldn't imagine anything better in the world. Thinking about getting married and to live this forever. And we were living this miracle, not caring about anything outside us, taking care of our bodies and our souls, or maybe not taking care about our souls at all?

If you are so crazy about other person, that nothing else exists and you don't want to see anything else but him, it's gonna be shitty one day, I promise. Especially if you are so addicted and in love with this person, that you don't know what you actually want. I forgot about myself and I have no idea how to find it again, cause I don't know how to be 'me' and how to be 'us' in one moment.


"To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'" (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand.)


Truth? I do not know, I'm trying to find out for last 2 years. 2 years and 22 days.

your understanding of love

ph: Weegee (Arthur Fellig)

a little closure

ph: pirosbicikli

You made the note pass all awkward.

At work you’re running out the door and I’m slyly slipping my seven digits into your palm, and you give this ‘what the fuck?’ look. I wondered what your face looked like when you saw it was my number.

You said it was the age difference.

And I’ve never been one to get turned down. I was confused. Straight baffled. Angered. Very very angered. We’ve been flirting five months, don’t tell me you suddenly have ethics. So, I wasn’t gonna stop, this was something I wanted to win.

You told me you didn’t want a girlfriend.

But you were so quick to get intimate after you got out of your shell. After that day you drove me home. And you said “kiss me.” After that, it was smooth. Every touch, kiss, motion, it was all natural. What started as my nine month campaign to get you to notice me has proved successful and

we were in flames. You have what it takes to drive me crazy and you use it abuse it.

You told me to send you a picture.

To help you remember, while you were five hundred miles away taking a months vacation. And I did. Everyday for a week after that I wake up to a text, “you’re sexy.” I would say something back, you’d never respond after that. You send me a text at three am one day, telling me you’re home.

You were leaving for college in three days though.

So you see me the next night. It’s bliss. You tell me how pretty I am, and how I should never let anyone tell me different. You say you want to keep in touch. We leave with you telling me you would love to see me every day before you left.

You never even called.

Yet I text you the night before your first class, wishing you luck. Asking if you’re nervous and making small talk. I tell you I miss you and you some how avoid saying it back. We stopped talking.

You text me out of the blue.

A month later. Saying you’ll be in town for your friends bachelor party. Saying you wanted to see me. And so I wait. Friday, nothing. Saturday, nothing. Sunday, nothing. And somehow I knew not to expect anything. Somehow it didn’t hurt so much… But I couldn’t let go. And I kept sending small cute texts. I tried to keep something going.

But you never said anything back.

So I guess that was that. You’re still in my daily thoughts. Silly little things that remind me of the time spent with you. How happy you made me. Thinking about this now is dragging a smile across my lips that’s almost exponential.

You made me fall in love.

And you didn’t feel it back. It’s been two months and you’re a plague. I guess a little closure would have been nice.

to know you better

ph: cristina altieri + weheartit

surrogate girlfriend

ph: Marija Strajnic

I am exhausted. Actually, I’m weary. My name means weary and I have always felt it, but how do you express to anyone at age 14, 15, 19 that you feel weary? Weatherworn, battered, sad with life and people? I am falling in love with a man with a girlfriend. A beautiful, loving girl I once was blessed to call my friend. A girl he loves and he doesn’t deserve. He’s pursued me throughout their entire relationship, even while she was still in America with us. When they took a three-day break, he found me and begged for me. She left the state for a weekend and he came to my door, begging to just let him hold my face in his hands. He says he wants to understand me, the girl who hides everything, shields everything. And now, while his girlfriend is living in France again, they are in an open-relationship, and he and I have fallen into an affair. I resisted for months, but throughout drunkenly fell into bed with him again and again. He’s forceful, selfish and manipulative. He even confessed, tonight, that he is using me, hoping I would confess reciprocation to heal his guilt. I told him I wasn’t using him. I am being used as a surrogate girlfriend. Someone he knows will care for him, ache for his presence and satisfy him. And he has found me, a girl who has never had a commitment, a boyfriend, a true love before, and has devastated me. I fought this for so long with him and every man who has tried because I was scared. But I also fought hard because I knew the days of lying in bed together, the confessions, the intimacy, the fact that we have become each others best friends, was all wrong. It has beaten at my conscience and emotions, until now, I am numb to guilt. I am numb to everything but the desire to be loved in return. My friend overdosed two weeks ago, and I am terrified because I cannot mourn her, because I am numb. The girls I live with, who a month prior I believed to be my life long friends, have abandoned and shamed and bullied me from my home with them because of him. But I can’t care because I am numb. The only space in my heart now is consumed with a desperate, constant, throbbing ache to have the first person I ever let in, the first man I broke my guard to, to hold me. He told me he was afraid of falling in love with me, that he wanted to be my first love, that he would leave her if I asked, and I said I couldn’t. I was scared and ashamed. Now my world is collapsing around me, and I am desperately clinging to any stable ground. I want him now, but he is returning to Europe for our break, where he will spend the weeks in the arms of a woman who loves him more purely and honestly than I ever could. And it is over. He doesn’t want me anymore. I can’t expect anything else from him, and I can’t feel anything but desperately, unendingly weary.

how i'd make you feel better

ph: lichtschichtpfirsich + weheartit

my love for you

ph: Alexandra Hawley

It’s been one year. I mean, I guess it has. I can’t pinpoint when I fell in love with you. It wasn’t when we first started talking last summer. It wasn’t by the end of last year, I was already in a different relationship. But it happened sometime. I started to love you. I still love you. I don’t know why.

We’ve never met. I started talking to you randomly after a mass-chat ended. It was just us and we talked until like four in the morning. The next day? Same thing. It became a common occurrence. We’d talk all night, when our other friends would ask us why we weren’t on Skype with the group of people, they would know. They just stopped asking after a while.

Whenever it was we finally decided to fess up to the slow, building feelings we had both been having, it was liberating. But entrapping at the same time. Pretty soon after we ended up “together.” Even though we never wanted to call it that. 1,500 miles between us was enough for us to not want to be “dating.” Neither of us would want to do the long distance thing.

I went to school a month before you did. Before I left I tried to make things easier. Stop talking as much. Stop being on Skype all the time with you. But it just… Well, it worked a bit. But it saw fit to rip how I felt to shreds. I just wanted to keep on being with you, fuck talking to other people, fuck college. I just wanted to spend all the time I could talking with you.

Being at college has been a haze of things. Orientation and classes, hanging out with the new people I’ve met until late hours, smoking at night with a few people, then going to bed and restarting it all the next day. I’ve been busy and we haven’t talked a lot. Sure. I’ve called. We’ve talked some. And every time I feel the same, I don’t want to stop. I don’t care if it’s silence. You’re still there. And then I’ll finally hang up to go back to my life here.

When I hang out with people I feel like I could be happy with them. I am while I am with them. And then in the darkness before I end up falling asleep there’s some sort of guilt. Why am I bothering spending time thinking about them, when I should be thinking about you? You’re the one I love. I can’t hide those feelings. But you’re too damn far away, and you’ve not been the best one in this whole “managing some form of relationship that is long distance thing.”

You called me a week after I had been at college and said “We need to talk.” And we just talked about inconsequential things. I had homework to get to. But when I said I needed to go, you blurted out “Are we like… actually dating?” There. The point of you calling me. The way you said it let me know, you had something to tell me. But it wasn’t something I wanted to hear. It wasn’t something you wanted to tell. I answered no. You didn’t have to tell me anything.

You asked me what would happen if we found other people we had feelings for. I said if it happened to you, you just needed to tell me and I’d let you go. As if it would be that easy. I said it because if it had happened to me I’d want you to be able to be okay with it, I guess. Then you asked about hooking up with someone. That was harder. I told you it’d be okay. Because if I had hooked up with someone because we “weren’t dating” and the fact that you were 1,500 miles away, I’d still want you to love me. I value you too much.

I asked you who you had hooked up with.

You told me it was some guy at camp you hadn’t seen in years. And you didn’t even know how it happened. And you asked me if we were still okay. If I hated you.

Of course I didn’t. I had told you we weren’t dating. I had told you I’d be okay with it. But I don’t even know. As soon as you had fessed up… It fucked me up. I started spending more time with people here and not talking to you. When we talked earlier it felt good. But you talked about a party you had just gotten back from.

You told me that there were others you could go to, but you weren’t ‘cause your roommate wanted you to walk her back. So you had agreed. My fear of you hooking up with someone. Of finding someone. Of anything like that hit me like a brick. You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger. You could do anything you wanted with a guy, tell me, and I’d be a bit pissed. But I’d be held back by my love for you.

I can’t even think about these people down here that I could be with. That would be better for my to be with. I can’t think about it because it makes me think of you and how much I would hate myself for finding someone else and hurting you. I hate being the emo kid of the century, but I don’t have anything to hide from this with. I don’t have a bottle to hole up in, I don’t have anything to make me forget for a night.

So I wanted to do something to organize my thoughts. I picked this. Writing.

With love-CS

don't let me

ph: Heiner Luepke + weheartit

back around

ph: Mariana Pacho López

I always find it funny. It seems like every time I’m happy again or things are finally looking up, he comes right back around.

This “he,” is the boy I was in love with all of freshman year of college. My freshman year of college was him. I spent every moment with him, sometimes just as best friends, sometimes as cuddle buddies, and sometimes as more. But through it all, I loved him. Through every fight and harsh thing he said to me, through every tear, I promised myself that it would somehow be worth it. We were happy together for a few months, having fun, nothing serious – to him at least. But to me, every moment made me so happy and as girls stupidly do, I fell in love. However, as things always do, it ended. He went back to his ex-girlfriend and left me behind. I felt abandoned, hurt, angry, sad, depressed, every feeling you could imagine. Even worse, he ignored me, put me down, was awkward around me, making every part of the friendship and relationship we worked at seem as though it had never meant anything. Then it started, the rumors of him telling people that he never even really liked me. That I was just convenient at the time of need. I had never been so hurt in my life. I came home one weekend from school and cried every night. I went down to beach near my house where I usually go with my thoughts and sat down, stared at the ocean hoping for answers, but could do nothing but hysterically cry. A guy had never affected me and hurt me so much in my life. He had told me loved me, told me he cared, told me he really could see himself with me in his life. But he lied. He had said all those things because that’s what I wanted to hear, yet I was so blinded by my love and happiness that I didn’t care. The last month of school was torture. Being around him in class, in my dorm, around my friends, it as so awkward and hard to get past. But as it always, time heals all wounds.

Then came sophomore year, a new year, a new me. I became more confident, ready to have fun and possibly find someone new. Things between me and my old love had finally gone back to somewhat normal. “Best friends” again. But of course my attraction was always there, and I could tell so was his.

Second semester I found someone new. Someone who treated me that way I deserve to be. I’m with him now and he is everything I’ve dreamed of. Sweet, caring, tells me I’m beautiful everyday, always wants to know what I’m doing and how my day was going. We’ve begun to become closer and closer in every way possible. He’s met my family and friends and I’ve met his. I can see myself being so happy with him and not having a care in the world because I am truly happy. Yet there’s a wall. A wall I can’t yet let down. I was so hurt once before that to let my guard down so quick would be dumb. Or would it? I really don’t know. I don’t even know how I feel sometimes. I’m scared and can’t figure out how I truly feel. I know I really like him, I know I really see myself being with him, but somehow I’m terrified of the unknown. Terrified of being hurt, of being left behind, but I have to remember – they’re not all like him. Not everyone will break my heart like he did.

But then here he comes, as soon as I find someone new, someone who makes me truly happy and makes me smile. Telling me he’s in love with me again. Telling me I should give it time and me and him can work, that he’s done with his girlfriend, that it had been bad timing before and he wants it to work. He always comes back around.

to make happy

ph: lichtschichtpfirsich + weheartit

my questions

ph: sinister kid

We met 6 days after my 18th birthday, at my friend's party. He caught my eye immediately, but I wasn't sure if he was interested. I left the party to go clubbing and he went to my friend's place with his best friend, who I've known for about a year. He got my friend's number and was flirting with her, but she wasn't interested. Two days later I saw him again. Thankfully I had claimed him as my latest crush, so my friends made sure I was there to see him. It was summer, he was swimming with another one of his best friends, who I've known for a while as well. He offered to drive me to my night class at art school, even though we hardly knew each other. The next day he asked for my number on facebook. He remembers what I wore on these two occasions, right down to the shoes I was wearing and how I was sitting on the grass. He also recalls that he offered to drive me because he thought I was hot. I get this stupid half smile just writing that.

Anyway, we planned to catch up again and my feelings for him were developing into the most ridiculous crush I have ever had. He drove me to a party the next week, even though he only knew a few of my friends he met the same night that we met. We bailed early and he took me to a lookout. He has said a few times that he planned to kiss me then, but I got nervous so I decided to have a running race with him. When we got back in the car, we talked for about an hour and I told him everything - from still being a virgin, to my estranged father. He listened, never looked bored, and even told me how much he respected my still having my virginity. He had been in a 2 year relationship that ended 6 months-a year prior, but overall he has slept with more girls than I've kissed boys. A fact that still haunts me to the day. He told me how badly he was hurt, being cheated on by his ex, which lead to him not wanting a relationship. Not that this was really something on my mind, but my heart sank a little.

My feelings grew stronger and in the following week my heart sank further. I had been warned from my friend who's number he got first that he was flirting with her just as much as he was with me, so I confronted him and that issue was solved.
By the following Saturday, 15 days after we had met, we started dating. Only hours before we decided to be a couple, he had written the first of many post-it notes that have come to fill my life as constant reminders that he is there for me.

When I moved out of my parent's home to house-sit my sister's place across town, he slept over whenever he could, even when we weren't having sex yet. He never pressured, he just held me in his sleep, possibly my fondest memory so far.

We try to see each other whenever we can, texting each other constantly and he would call me at night just to chat, even if we had spent the day together. I not only had post-it notes cluttering my life, but two raps he had written, cue cards tacked to my bookshelf, a letter for our 3 month anniversary and other little presents. Eventually, my work began to suffer and I knew he was the reason, so I dumped him...
We got back together 30 minutes later. He always tells me that I broke his heart that night.

Everything has been perfect apart from these little things, and the girls from his past. There were so many that were hurt when we got together, because he had told them he didn't want a relationship. Then there is his ex girlfriend, who still says that she loves him, has offered for him to sleep at her house after clubbing and runs into him relatively often. I hate this, but she is a nice girl and I know he loves me. So I don't understand what I can do about this.

So, readers, if this has been published, these are my questions:
* His ex was with him for nearly 2 years, so it's understandable that she wants to be a part of his life still, but do I need to confront her about anything when she is nothing but nice to me? I try to keep in mind that I'm still friendly with my ex (though we dated for 3 weeks nearly 2 years ago) and that I have many male friends who I flirt with.
*My mother tries to remind me to be realistic, but we're both serious when we say we want to marry each other. But I worry about the little things, like the fact that he is the only guy I've slept with, my first serious boyfriend etc etc. I don't worry about the fact that he is my first love, because I like that we can be so serious so young. He has been in love before, but he says that it has never been like what we have, does that count for anything? How optimistic can I be?

I love you all.
-enne