🔵 By Tyler Bowman. Photo by lauragrafie.
PROMPT:
– Write about your greatest heartbreak.
– What did you learn from it?
– How did you take that into your next relationship?
– Who was at fault, if anybody?
– What about it hurt the most?
Love is tender. Love is hard.
Love is fun. Love is scary.
As a boy my first love was everything, my entire world. Finally, someone to take to the movies, dinner, and parties. Fond memories of firsts seared themselves deeply into my brain. The mere thought of the first girl to steal my heart warms my body. But as a kid, the excitement soon wore off as I naively thought that loves two, three and four were bound to be even better.
Arrogant, I pursued mistake after mistake until both our hearts eventually broke. That painful experience taught me to value the good people in my life, a lesson that unfortunately didn’t sink in prior to my next relationship. What followed were case studies of unhealthy relationships, blueprints of what not to do. My whims and interests were sporadic as a piece of toilet paper trapped in a tornado.
Cognitively, I didn’t fully develop until behind bars, so I do reflect somewhat graciously. I acknowledge that my ridiculous mindset at the time, coupled with a distorted worldview, were to blame for the disastrous relationships of my youth. It crushes me knowing how much drugs negatively impacted my life and the lives of others. I genuinely cared for the good people in my life then, but my actions didn’t align.
As I sit in prison today I reminisce happily about the girl whose heart I broke, which only served to break my own. I long for a healthy relationship, an experience I sacrificed to bad decisions. So, don’t take people for granted, respect them and yourself.
My heart is tender. My environment is hard.
I am fun. The system is scary.