Jericho's Diary: Love as a Lesson

Do not lose yourself for love - this is the most important lesson love has ever taught me. This lesson is applicable not only if you are single, but also when you are in a relationship. "Be yourself" seems like one of those cliches you can find on any cheap looking decorative pillow, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to stick to you when dealing with love. Love can be addicting, and like every addiction, it changes you - usually not for the better. You want to be "the cool boy", you want to make "the relationship work", but sometimes it's better to let go and focus on yourself instead.

If someone makes you feel like the way you are is not good enough, that only means that they are not good enough to be with you - no person worth your love should ever want you to change. When I look back at my past relationships, I see I left a part of me with every ex-boyfriend. It took me years to realize that I left that part with that person in order to make space for a new, stronger me.

When I fell in love for the first time, I was such an insecure boy. I have been bullied a lot during that time, which made me insecure about literally everything. From my hobbies to the coat I wore everyday - it felt like all my choices were always weird and wrong, and I was under high scrutiny everyday. When I fell in love with a guy, it was your typical middle school sweetheart love. I would fill my journal with entries about how cute his smile was, or how much I fell for his big brown eyes. I walked around weeks crushing on this guy, too insecure to even say anything about it to him. When he finally noticed me, I thought my life was complete. I had everything I've ever wished for, right? Life always goes differently than you think, especially if you're a 12 year old, with zero life experience, and very bad eyebrows. We weren't meant to be.

The second time I fell in love was during my eighth grade year. I was a bit older, a bit wiser, but still very innocent and naive. He was one of those "don't even try" and "he's way out of your league" type of guys. I remember how people at school looked at me after we became official. "Wait, what, he's with Jericho?", "What does he see in him?", and "How could he ever get him?".

As a boy who wasn't considered a cool kid at all, our relationship was a talk of Instagram for a while. The funny thing was that his personality was totally not like that. He was kind of shy, very focused on his passions & just a kind person. We had a lot of things in common too. I experienced many big steps in our personal life together.

These past 5 years I truly started living for myself. Moving to Atlanta, meeting a new, amazing guy - life has been great to me. I am thankful for my past chapters about love. Rather than seeing love as a drug, I see love as growth. And I am excited for this new love story I am about to write.

♡, Jericho.