There are countless novels and poems written about a girl’s first love. It almost always ends in heartbreak, but it’s also always described as the relationship that makes you, that sets the pace for your life. It’s explained as beautiful, romantic, hell every early Taylor Swift song is all about it! Tim McGraw? Come on! But where does that leave the girls for whom this narrative is false?

Sure, perhaps it is true that your first “love” sets the pace for life after that. But when that pace is set by trauma, people are often then opened up to more trauma. People will always try to excuse the actions of young boys, being 16 is “tough.” I think there are some things in life that are a major learning curve. Being kind and treating others with dignity? That’s not something someone should need to have beaten into them.

My first “love” was a boy from school. We were 15, turning 16. We met in study hall. I always felt like I wasn’t the type of girl that boys were into, and he seemed to like that he was the one who was. He asked me to be his girlfriend in the cutest way, I’ll give him that— the guy had flowers, planned it out.

But pretty early on, things weren’t so spectacular, as much as I tried to convince myself that they were. The relationship, I learned years later, was emotionally abusive. I was pressured into situations that I still don’t talk about today. All the while, I was made to hate myself. Nothing was ever enough for him. I was often left rejected and just feeling dirty. Sometimes my skin actually felt like it was crawling as if I had just fallen in the mud.

It was a very confusing time in my life that lasted for a year and a half. I distanced from my friends, was anxious and depressed, and had trouble feeling like I could really focus on anything without worrying about what this person would think. The relationship turned long-distance and was met with his bad behavior being elevated. I was grasping for what I thought was love, begging him at times to give it to me. When I think back on these moments as a healthy, happy 22-year-old woman, I just want to pick up teenage me and hug her.

I’ve grown a lot since then. And while I rarely have a relationship that I don’t have to preface with “hey, I’ve got some baggage…” I still feel lightyears beyond what I thought possible at 17 . Suffering trauma at a young age is weird. It was a struggle to identify it as just that, trauma. I’m sure after reading what I said above and also imagining the things I left out, you’re assuming it’s nuts that I didn’t see it immediately. There are a lot of factors that go into such a thing, but the biggest one from my own experience was that I normalized it for myself. It was just something I dealt with. It’s over now, all good.

It is really, really hard to have all of your firsts—first kiss, first boyfriend—all tied up in someone who did nothing but bring you harm. Those memories are often the ones people look back and laugh on. For me, I prefer not to think of them at all. As time has passed, I’ve chosen to find new firsts to focus on. There is my first “real” love, one that was kind and supportive and to this day lifts me up when I think about it. The first man who held my hand and told me that I deserve only the best this world has to offer, not what I have been getting. There will be other things too, like my first proposal, wedding, first dances, kids eventually.

I crave security and feeling wanted, but that is something I have had to create within myself. Not because there won’t be someone to give that to me, I’m sure there will. But even when I receive it, my brain is in a constant state of panic that I will lose it. I worry that it will be taken away.

Security of the self, when it comes to love, is something that no one can take away, only add to. So yeah, my first love wasn’t love at all. But I am learning to build up from that experience. First loves never last forever, anyway. This one that I have right here, this one will be with me for the long haul.