The First Time I Loved Someone, I Forgot To Ask If That Was Okay With Her

I was in the fifth standard when I fell in love for the first time. I didn’t know that’s what it was. I just knew that she was the most important person in any room she walked into, and that I had very strong opinions about who else got to think so.

She was cute in a way that even now, decades later, I can’t fully articulate. Her skin glowed. Her smile was the kind that made you feel like you had done something right just by being in front of it. She spoke well. Not just the words, but the way she carried them. She was, by every measure a ten-year-old could possibly use, perfect.

And somehow, against all reasonable odds, she liked me back.

We had a thing. A ritual. Our lunch spot was a garden a few meters from class. A few flowers (don’t remember which ones, didn’t care enough) lush green lawn, open sky, the whole setup. And we had a rule, unspoken, never once discussed. Neither of us opened our lunch box until the other arrived. That was it. That was our love language before either of us knew what a love language was.

Looking back, that was genuinely the most romantic thing I have ever been a part of. Two kids. An unopened lunch box. A promise made without words.

I really should have just let that be the whole story as my first every blog. But and this age I feel the next part is more important.

One afternoon, a boy walked up to her. Politely. Almost impressively politely, for his age. He asked, quite gently, if he could join her for lunch. She opened her mouth to reply. But I replied first.

“No. She has lunch only with me.”

And then I took her hand. And walked away. With her. Without asking her a single thing.

And I want you to know. I clearly remember I was proud. Full chest. Head high. The walk of someone who had just done something magnificent.

Neither of us had the brain development to fully process what had just happened. She didn’t protest. I didn’t reflect. We just went and ate our lunch like it was a perfectly normal Tuesday. Which, to us, it was.

However, reflecting about it now, I hope that boy is somewhere out there living his best life. I genuinely do. I think about him sometimes, this kid who asked a very reasonable question and got absolutely bulldozed by a ten-year-old with boundary issues and a hero complex.

And her, my first darling, wherever she is I hope she is happy. I hope she is thriving. I hope every lunch she has ever had since then has been entirely, completely, one hundred percent her own choice.

Here is the thing I have had to sit with as an adult.

I called it love. But what I was actually protecting wasn’t her. It was the feeling she gave me. Her fondness for me. The ritual. The warmth of being chosen by someone wonderful.

I didn’t even stop to wonder what she wanted.

That’s not love. That’s ownership dressed up in soft lighting.

And the terrifying part? It felt exactly the same from the inside.

That’s the thing nobody warns you about. The first time you love someone, you don’t yet know the difference between loving a person and loving what they make you feel. Most of us spend the rest of our lives learning to tell the two apart.

More such tales in the next.