I just finished watching the latest installment of the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before series and while I do agree with the general consensus that the first movie was better, I still found it cute and a good continuation of the story. It struck a chord with me because I could see a lot of myself in the ways Lara Jean navigated her relationships, friendships, emotions and general confusion in the world of boys and love. In the first movie, to wrap it all up, Lara Jean accidentally falls in love with the boy she’s fake dating to help him make his ex-girlfriend jealous, as well as cover up her real crush until she realizes she no longer has a crush on him anymore but rather wants to be with the guy she’s fake dating. In the second movie, she ends up meeting another old crush and feels like those strong feelings she used to have for him are rekindled, but dilemma, she’s already in a real relationship with the boy she was previously fake dating. The question ends up being, how do you which is the one you really want to be with?

It’s funny because I found myself in a similar situation when I was 12. Yes, I know, it sounds really dumb but at a very young and naive age, I entered a very tricky world of navigating relationships and how manipulative people can be. Especially when you’ve never dated before. There’s no guidebook on how to be a girlfriend or how to handle relationships or what the protocol or proper procedure is for certain situations if you’ve never been in them before. When you’re new, everything can be very confusing and I could relate to Lara Jean in a lot of those ways, remembering how I was when I first entered the dating world of relationships.

The irony is that I wasn’t really looking for a relationship to begin with. My family had just moved into a new house, and around the corner from me lived this boy who started talking to me now that we were at the same bus stop every morning. We rode the bus to school every morning together, along with my best friend at the time. I guess you can say we were flirting, although I didn’t know what flirting was back then, being young and dumb. Towards the beginning of Christmas break, my best friend beat me to it and asked him out. It sounds a little bit like that Mean Girls scene where Regina gets back with Aaron Samuels even though she knows Cady liked him, now that I think about it. I guess you could say I was a little crushed because I was waiting for him to ask me out the entire time. I didn’t know girls could ask too, but at the same time, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t exactly a confident enough girl yet to go out there and get what I want in a direct manner. I was very traditional in the chivalrous sense, living through Disney colored glasses of fairy tales and what to expect in traditional men and women roles. But the funny thing was, as crushed as I was, I wasn’t really mad at either of them. I honestly had no hard feelings about it, but I did feel left out. And I expressed that to them. It’s funny how civilized we all were about this weird love triangle that was happening about it. Probably because we were 12 and honestly had no real emotions invested in relationships just yet. When you’re 12, the world of ‘dating,’ is simply having someone walk you to your class, hold your books, make out with in between periods to make other girls jealous and to nauseate the faculty. It’s all very superficial. Their solution to my feeling left out was a simple one. This boy offered to set me up with his best friend while he dated my best friend. It sounds really comical now looking back on it, but it would actually turn out to be a pivotal moment in my life. I agreed to this set up and come January, when school was back in session, I met this boy and come January 14th-ish, we were officially ‘dating.’

We dated for about a month. We stayed after school almost every day in the library to hang out and get to know each other, he’d walk me to my bus, he’d always kiss me goodbye, he’d always come walk me to class if his was near mine, and we would exchange notes in between classes (some of which I still have). He took me to the Valentine’s dance and even got me a teddy bear and roses. We talked on the phone several times a week (back when talking on the phone was still a thing). We both got yelled at for how often and how long we were always on the phone together (cell phones weren’t a thing yet, so we were on the house landline).

The funny thing is, during this month, I had no idea what was happening before my very eyes. But that original boy did. And he got very jealous. He broke up with my best friend, and then proceeded to lie to me and tell me that my boyfriend didn’t really like me. That it was all pretend and that he really just found me annoying. As a 12 year old, if anyone tells you this, you just immediately are crushed and embarrassed as all hell. He even manipulated me into believing it by having me stay silent on a 3 way phone call, while he baited my boyfriend into ‘boy talk’ about me. Looking back, I do realize how stupid and easily gullible I was about the entire thing. But hey, you’re stupid at 12. So the next day, I wrote a letter ending it and passed it to him after he dropped me off at my class in between 3rd and 4th period. One period I had a boyfriend and then the next I was single again.

What I was surprised about was how I felt. Being new at this relationship thing, I didn’t really expect this wave of emotions and for me to miss him so bad. I mean, I lived life just fine before him, right? So why did I feel like this. Was I supposed to feel like this? I broke up with him, so why was I sad? It was a really confusing time.

The next week, I started dating the original boy. But don’t worry, that stint was truly short lived. I don’t even remember how long it lasted because I ended up realizing I didn’t really care for it that much. I think it lasted all of 2 weeks if not less. Whatever feelings I had for him before, were no longer there. In that time, it only amplified how much I really felt about my original boyfriend. I realized I really missed him. I missed him being by my side, walking me to class, talking to him everyday after school. As Stormy says, “Sometimes you have to kiss the wrong man to know what’s right.” It’s weird how you just wake up and realize you really do have feelings for someone. It’s also hard when you’re a teenager because the teenage mind warps every emotion and amplifies it by 10. That’s why every teenager thinks they know everything and feels like the world is ending for them and when their heart breaks, it’s like your soul is being crushed. Dramatic, I know. But unfortunately hormones are an unavoidable part of adolescence.

I’ll save you the longer version of this already drawn out dumb love story and tell you it has a happy ending. It took us over a year to get back together, but we did it. And the second time around, we both took it more seriously. We learned a lot about each other in the year we were ‘apart’ but not really apart. We stayed friends the entire time and still talked almost every day. I guess you could say we were still dating, we just couldn’t say out loud for some reason, in fear of looking vulnerable to the other party again. Because honestly, if you’re wrong about the other party sharing the same feelings, it really does hurt like hell.

My husband is my high school sweetheart and my first boyfriend. Our relationship is very weird in the sense that neither of us were really looking for anything permanent or meaningful but we serendipitously ended up falling for each other and ending up together in the end.

What I learned from this very young experience was not only could I feel this way about someone else even at a young age, but in my confusion about my feelings for two different boys, I learned how to differentiate between the two. Like the end of P.S. I Still Love You, I learned that my feelings for my husband were real and weren’t going away anytime soon. And nearly 20 years later, they still haven’t. A LOT of things have changed since then but my feelings for him only grow stronger.

P.S. I still love you. <3