My first girlfriend was psychotic, or at least that's what everyone else told me.
She overwhelmed me with a paranormal kind of love, which would make me feel as though her existence was entirely dependent on me. She ached when we were apart, displayed unhealthy jealousy and constantly worried about my well-being.
One day, after a passionate fight, she looked at me with teary eyes and trembling lips, and told me she would rather die than lose me.
Was she crazy? Perhaps. But when I look back now, I was even crazier to let her go.
I didn't know how to handle her love; the intensity of it all frightened me. My heart went into a defensive shell, which eventually tore us apart.
Outsiders pegged her as being an insecure little girl, exhibiting a typical phase of puppy love. But those people didn't know what we had. That "puppy love" lasted for years, even after I broke her heart into a few separate pieces.
The love she showed me was raw and uninhibited, which is more than most people know how to do in a world where so many others are perpetually and emotionally unavailable.
I'm not condoning her jealousy or dependence, but I do admire the intent behind it. These were potential issues I should have been able to work through with her.
Her heart was in the right place, and I should have fostered what we had together into the life she wanted for us.
What was I so afraid of? Here was this passionate young woman who made me her everything, and I responded by pushing her away. I was too childish to realize the passion she held in her heart for me was a thing of rare beauty.
Well, I'm a man now, and I am ready for this kind of love. In fact, I crave it.
The words I've put together here do not hold the intent of winning back my first girlfriend's heart; we have since grown apart and live different lives.
Instead, they are in place to ask the universe for another chance at crazy love.
It's somewhat of a phenomenon to find. People my age are often unable to love like this because many of them have tasted the pain of getting too close, only to have their heart torn apart (oftentimes by a boy like me).
A lot of them don't know how. Through no fault of their own, they are incapable of loving to this capacity. To love someone so deeply is dangerous. You essentially risk everything.
But I yearn for a love like this. It’s what I need to be able to leave this world with a satisfied soul.
I need someone who is willing to open her heart and put their everything into us because she knows the kind of love I'm talking about is so worth it.
Why do I want someone to love me like this? Because I want to love someone with the exact same intensity.
I know I don't deserve a second chance. I've already had it, and I completely squandered it, but I'm going to seek it, anyway. I want to be overwhelmed. I want to be terrified. I want to feel all the greatest of human emotions burst out of me.
I want our love to be obsessive, insatiable and f*cking psychotic. I want people to be grossed out by it.
If she were to die, I want to go with her.
If the day comes when I am blessed enough to find this woman, I don't want to give her a wedding ring.
I want to give her the ring of the pin she pulled from the grenade which sat deep within my soul, awakening emotions I never even knew existed.
