It started virtually, just like every other good thing in this new age we’re living in.
Me, a virgin of 21 years old, and her, a wild but scared 17-year-old high-school girl.
We met at a random chat application somewhere around the afternoon of 4th February 2018. I hit the first text, and she replied the next day.
Now, I had dated other girls before, but only briefly and only to be dumped by them for no apparent reason. Yet, this one, she was different. After exchanging a few messages and pictures on that app, we shifted to Instagram, and then she gave me her number and I texted her on Whatsapp.
I know, right… everything happened really fast.
“ This is the fastest number that I have ever gotten from a girl”, I remember thinking to myself.
The Six Hour Long Phone Call
We spoke on the phone that very same day, though briefly… and by briefly I mean 37 minutes until her grandmother came into the room and interrupted her.
Then we did it again the next day, for six hours straight. I don’t know how this happened, I just remember looking at the time, 3:04 am, and then hearing her say: “WE HAVE BEEN TALKING FOR SIX HOURS?! OMG… I really like you.”
As we were going back and forth on the phone every day, talking about ourselves or, “doing the dirty” with each other on the line, I remember her saying the big L-word.
I thought I misheard it, so I didn’t say it back that day. But the very next evening, was the one to say and say it clear and loud so that neither of us could pretend to not have heard it.
The First Meeting
We lived approximately 22 miles (36 kilometers) apart from each other, but there she was as promised.
Two weeks after knowing each other and talking on the phone every day, I had her next to me at a bar, while I was shaking and she was shy.
I still remember our first kiss. It was… bad.
I pretended I knew what I was doing while she had her eyes wide open with surprise that she was kissing a guy for the first time in her life.
And then the first sex… that very same day.
It was painful, for both of us, and I remember leaving my apartment feeling as if we had both gone to the gym for 4 hours straight.
Then we did it again the next day.
Our First Fight
May 2018, on a very hot afternoon in her city, after I had just left a documentary casting job, excited to tell her all about the guy that fell from the horse.
I could feel the negativity in the air when we suddenly clashed in a battle of words that we hadn’t dared to say to each other so far.
She blocked me. I blocked her. Forty-eight hours later, we were doing it again standing up at the corner of my bedroom.
The Best Summer
The first summer we spent together, was the best summer of all these three and a half years of a relationship.
Going out by the lake to get high and drink every night while hanging out at coffee shops or my bedroom during the day.
I would write poetry while she would sing little made-up songs while both of us would enjoy the fragrance of being so young. That’s when I started my first poetry book. One hundred and eleven poems to be exact, our of which a handful was dedicated to her.
It was a good summer, filled with passion, love, heat, sand, salt, sea, cigarettes, weed, good food, trips, poetry, and a lot of promises.
Promises that we have tried our best to keep.
One Cold Winter
We started living together, just eight months after knowing each other. It… didn’t go as well as we expected.
I was the only one working while she was still in her senior high-school year, both of us with no clue of what we were doing. I remember we went on a trip to Bosnia with her father.
That was one hell of a real escape for us. With no money in our pockets but having so much fun with what we had.
I remember hugging her one night after we came back, looking at her green eyes and whispering in her ear: “Our love came for the first time in this Universe.”
It is was a love of a different kind… the kind of love that inspired me to pursue the writing career.
The Kiss That Sent Us To Rotterdam
It had only been a couple of months that I was getting paid well to write war-related articles when suddenly one day the client hit me with a shocking text:
“Facebook has changed its policies and our company is going under so we have to make some shortages. Best of luck with your future endeavors.”
We were mortified. Our safe and secure source of income had been lost in a matter of seconds. There we were, broke once more, starting a job as telemarketers at some hell hole somewhere near the city’s center.
Two weeks passed by until one day she left her work as usual and kissed me… as usual to then go home since I would work longer hours.
The big owner of the place saw us kissing and decided to fire us on the spot.
I had enough of it, so the very next day, I packed up and flew to Rotterdam and she came to join me one month later.
Two Houses And An Earthquake
We managed to survive for only three months in the Netherlands before booking a flight right back home.
I remember I got paid nearly one thousand bucks from a client and we spent the last day in a hotel where they gave us the only room available: The Love Room.
The night was clear on cold on Rotterdam as we prepared ourselves to go back to our home country. And who would’ve thought we would face life-threatening challenges.
September 27, 2019… It was a beautiful sunny afternoon that turned into a nightmare as both of us rushed to the stairs while the building shook uncontrollably.
“We made it through,” we figured, but we had no idea that two months later, our whole house would be destroyed.
The elevator in the first building wouldn’t work and we were sick and tired of climbing five floors on foot so we just decided to go back to the same house we were staying at before we went to Rotterdam.
End of November 2019, 3:54 am… I remember hearing a loud noise like an explosion before the whole ground started shaking. We rushed for our lives while seeing walls falling and stairs breaking in front of our feet.
However, after it was all over, we were still together, a little injured, but happy.
Three Months Of Lockdown
I remember when the first coronavirus infection came to our country, the government told everyone not to panic. One week later, a full country lockdown was set, like never before.
We were living in another city by this time, both of us worked as freelance writers while making the best of every day.
The food was good. The movies were terrifying. And our love was growing stronger.
I can’t point out the exact day or month that we became obsolete, but I remember her saying: “We need to do more stuff. We are basically living like robots inside of these four walls. If we don’t do more stuff, I will just leave to my mom’s.”
And so she did…
The Summer That Nearly Drove Us Insane
I can’t blame it all on the heat, because this current summer is the hottest I have ever seen in my life. I remember I was living with my parents and she was living with her mom, 100 miles away from each other.
We would meet every couple of weeks, but that was never enough to put out the passion we felt when we were in that hotel room.
I got my driver’s license and she quit writing for a while. The fights were back, and we came to a point where we thought we would never make it out of the summer together.
Little did we know that we would get into business together, one year later.
From January 2021 Until Now
We have had a lot of fun this year. I have been doing poetry videos like never before while she has been vigorously studying content creation.
We are financially stable, wild, full of hopes and dreams for the future, and still together… well, somehow.
We have been having a really rough patch these past two weeks. I cannot tell if it is the business since we are both working very, very hard to achieve our goals… or if it is just us.
I don’t even know if it is other people trying to break us up because they don’t have the same kind of love that we do.
But what I do know, is the same thing that I have been telling her whenever things go bad: Our love came for the first time in this Universe!
And I still believe that she still believes that, we both still believe in our love.
And for our love I have written this short poem, the last day when we actually had fun:
The end…
(I hope that never comes)
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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