I wasn’t enough for you.

I saw my first romantic comedy when I was twelve. My mom was in the living room watching Something Borrowed, a movie a twelve-year-old definitely shouldn’t be watching. A movie about cheating and sex isn’t something a twelve-year-old should model love after. But I did.

After that, I watched more and more and became addicted. My teen years were filled with Nicholas Sparks movies and love songs that often brought me to tears. I related to Bridget Jones’s Diary and books like Dumplin. My adolescence has been filled to the brim with movies, books, and songs about romance. I became obsessed with the idea of falling in love at only sixteen, while also being the only single one in my friend group at sixteen. I watched everyone go to prom with dates, while I slow danced by myself and watched a rom-com later that night. Being a hopeless romantic had become part of my identity, even though I’d never known what it could feel like to be in love or who I could be in a relationship.

My first crush ever had blossomed in first grade. I even remember that his name was Michael, and he was always getting into trouble with the teachers by sticking out his tongue in class or saying a “no-no” word. My mom would jokingly mock that I’d liked a boy who was trouble — that I was already supposedly rebelling. It didn’t make sense to me at six why everything a boy said was making me giddy and smile in ways I had never done before. I never even got to tell Michael how I felt with pink construction paper hearts or glittered valentines because after first grade he moved away never to be seen again.

Michael moving away didn’t break my childhood heart. I forgot about him as soon as I’d supposedly “fallen in love” with him. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with Zac Efron from High School Musical. My first “play pretend” boyfriend. For years I planned my life around Zac Efron, getting magazines with him on the cover, sheets with his face on them, and watching any movie he was in. I was his number one supporter and he had no idea I existed. It was kind of ironic in a way, thinking I was “in love” with someone I actually knew nothing about.

My first, all-consuming, movie-kind of crush came when I was in sixth grade. His name was Robert — well everyone called him Bobby — and he got me under his spell immediately. For three years, I smiled and convinced him to talk to me. Saying Bobby was the popular type would be an understatement. Everyone in our class orbited around him as if he were the sun and we were all of his planets. I, on the other hand, had just gotten poorly cut bangs and acne for the first time. I didn’t have a real group of friends, and none of the boys looked my way.

But see, I thought he “loved” me too.

We would spend classes laughing behind my copy of The Hunger Games series, sometimes getting in trouble with the teacher. We’d joke around, and I felt like I was becoming part of his group, leaving behind the legacy of an awkward girl who cried every day of third grade. When I finally told him how I felt in eighth grade, in a long, calculated, beautifully written love sonnet of a paragraph all he had said back was “oh.” That “oh” haunted me for weeks, reminding me that my legacy couldn’t be forgotten in the form of a boyfriend. We never really talked after that, our friendship disintegrating and my heart suffering it’s first-ever crack.

In high school, I kept to myself. My friends were all getting boyfriends and dates to prom, while I was getting set up with a guy my friend knew. I watched the pretty girls sneak out of class to make out with their senior boyfriends in the hall, and later get caught for doing so. I’d pick up little conversations through the halls about their hookups, listening to them as if their lives were a script to a rom-com I could see myself watching. So in high school, I didn’t get to figure out who I could be in a relationship. I didn’t have those nauseating feelings of “love” for anyone most of my teen years. I never got kissed in the hallway, or slow danced at prom with someone who could lose their eyes in mine. I just read and wrote and observed love those years, taking it in like lessons. But once I fell in love, I realized that there are no lessons you can learn that will ever prepare you for it all.

I fell in love for the first time when I was twenty. We’d met through an online dating site, red flag number one. He was charming, tall, experienced, and had a smile that could even fool a nun into falling in love with him. He told me he loved me on a warm June night, under the flickering porch light with mosquitos biting at our ankles. That supposed “love” of his also came with a price though. He put me high on a pedestal while also making me feel like I was never enough. He held me around for a whole summer, manipulating me with sweet words of love whenever he would do something wrong. I’d ask for an apology, he’d show up more, and then act like I never existed. The same fucking cycle in rotation every two weeks for a whole summer.

He made me finally figure out who I was in a relationship. I am the one who gives their all and puts the other person first. I am the one who forgives him when he doesn’t talk to me for days. I’m the one that didn’t say a thing when he wanted me to take an Uber home alone at one-thirty in the morning. I’m the one with the “good morning. I hope you have a good day :)” and “good night. I love you” texts. I’m the one who stayed up all night waiting for a response that I knew was never going to come. I’m the one who makes the plans to go out at noon and wait around for you until you come around two. I’m the one who missed you when you were gone for days at a time saying you were too tired to talk to me but awake enough to stay up until four a.m. drinking with your buddies. I’m the one that stuck around and hung onto every kiss, hug, or moment of peace over all the fights, tears, and disappointments. I’m the one who made excuses for them because it seemed easier than breaking up with a first love I had given my everything to. I’m the one who stood on the porch crying when you dumped me out of nowhere and the one who loved you. I was the one that spent the weekend crying while you were telling me to “grow the fuck up.” I was the one wishing I could erase the memory of you like Clementine did to Joel in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At twenty, I never figured out what it felt like to truly be loved like in the books and movies.

But I figured out something far more important.

I learned that I am loving, caring, giving, and reliable. I learned that I’m the type of person to wish the person “sweet dreams” and to “have a good day.” I’m the one who writes love letters and recites them. I’m the one that deserves respect and communication and happiness. I’m the one who learned how to love herself through the storm of a toxic relationship. Through it all, I can thank every road block and heartache because they did teach me who I am in a relationship. I learned that my relationship with myself is the most important one I will ever have. I am the one who wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, and tells her reflection she loves herself because she deserves to hear it everyday.