The Error is Never Zero

On first love, growing up, and learning that not every question has an exact answer.

Why am I scared of writing?

Could it be that once something is written, it stays only on the page?

Or could it be that if I lay it all out on paper, it will finally ease my heart — that it will finally be time to accept it and move on?

Do I really want to move on?

A relationship.

Just one relationship.

But it wasn’t just one.

It was The First.

The first touch. The first trembling.

The first “I love you.”

The first goodbye.

The first adventures, the first trips, but also the first arguments and disappointments.

It’s been four months of no contact.

Four months is a long time.

Long enough to stop asking who the victim was.

You want to believe you were right. You want to believe you were the one who loved more, who cared more, who waited longer. The one who still checks her phone, secretly hoping for a call. The one who wants to be disappointed because the person she loved left during the hardest period of her life.

But four months is already too late for that.

You’re not the victim.

But you’re not the reason either.

Sometimes life is simply bigger than two people.

What am I expecting from The First?

After all, it really is The First.

The boldest. The most sincere.

So brave, yet so inexperienced.

How could She, The First, survive in the hands of two young fools who didn’t yet know how to protect her?

Writing this after my usual nightly shower, sitting on the bathroom floor with wet hair, I can still hear my father’s voice.

“Dad… was I really that ordinary that he couldn’t fight for me?”

“Eli, he failed his first year at university. He’s fighting with himself. Try to step into his shoes.”

How am I supposed to answer that?

My father was right.

He really had failed his first year. He was trying to become a man, trying to earn money, trying to be a good partner.

But the support surrounding him — his parents, his family, even me — was inconsistent. Mine certainly was.

I had a quick temper.

I could get angry just as quickly as I could apologize.

I loved deeply, but my signals were mixed.

How could they ever make someone feel safe?

And yet…

Why couldn’t he step into mine?

I was living in Switzerland, thousands of kilometers away from home, in an eleven-square-meter room.

Every Friday, I went to the hospital for injections.

Sometimes he would drive me there.

Sometimes, instead of feeling supported, I felt guilty for not being grateful enough.

On our last dinner together, I said something that, at the time, was completely true.

“If we got back together right now, this would be the end. But I don’t want it to be that way. I can’t imagine a better partner for my future family than you.”

I don’t think I’ll ever forget those words.

Words spoken by a twenty-year-old girl who still wanted to give her whole heart to one person.

Then my father interrupted my thoughts once again.

“Is your heart really that small that it can only love one person? Are you really that stingy with your feelings?”

He wanted to comfort me.

Instead, he gave me another question to carry.

Maybe that was the point.

Then, one day, something shifted.

Not because I stopped loving him.

Not because I suddenly understood everything.

But because I realized I wasn’t the only one carrying something heavy.

He was too.

We both were.

Maybe that’s what being twenty really is.

Trying to love someone while you’re still trying to become someone.

Maybe that’s why writing scared me so much.

Once the words are on paper, I can’t make him entirely guilty.

But I can’t make myself entirely guilty either.

The page asks for honesty.

And honesty rarely gives exact answers.

Somehow, with every passing day, I realize that concrete answers don’t always exist.

Life isn’t a clear mathematical problem waiting for the correct solution.

Or maybe the answer has always existed.

Maybe we’re simply not emotionally ready to accept it.

Writing the solution to an equation, step by step, is clear.

Life hides its own operators.

When “×” becomes “…”

When “=” becomes “≈”.

The error always has clearly defined borders.

We can spend our whole lives trying to minimize it.

But it is never zero.

Should that realization calm me down?

Or worry me?

That there is always an “if,” but almost never a “for sure.”

Maybe getting over your first love isn’t about finding the exact answer.

Maybe it’s learning to live with the approximation.