Love at First Sight

The most devastating part of my dating series my first lesbian love: Sapphic First Dates #4

When I fell for you all of the doors in my brain flew off of their hinges. All the window pains broke. I didn’t know how to be a person anymore. I couldn’t work out how all the light switches were flipped and yet no lights were on.

You have me believing in love at first sight. My brain broke down. All I could think about was you and where you were and when I’d see you again. Kissing you made my eyes roll back into my head with pleasure, made me want to crawl inside your skin and make a home there.

Notes app April 2022

She is the one who I loved fully despite knowing it was stupid, knowing it would end in my own heartbreak. It was worth it though to barrel through the joy of loving her, even if it left me prone on the floor afterwards.

literally had to lay on the floor several times after she left because I did not know what to do with myself, first lesbian love be like that

This was a situationship. An obsession so strong I felt high just imagining running into her at the supermarket. My heart skipped beats down every aisle. My skin felt alive. Moving in psychedelic swirls.

As soon as I saw her as she entered the bar where I sat waiting I was done for. Flat tack. Love at first sight(something I hadn’t believed in before). Salami liked her more than she liked me. I counted it as a sign.

Warm fingers curl beneath my lungs, trailing heat down every rib. Licks of flame through my throat sear a path that spells your name.

notes app March 2022

We talked about everything. Her one long sapphic relationship. My jealousy that she got to be gay and in love for all of high school. All the places we had almost met but hadn’t. She made every story about us. Her favourite song we would sing together. Her favourite restaurants she would take me to. The meals we might cook together. The swims we would take.

She teased me for coming back from the bathroom with a question for her, asked if I had been planning conversations in there. I was completely off guard. I was stumbling in ways I never had before. I had no power where I usually had it all. I was done for. I was giddy. I took her home and we sat on my couch until I was in her lap. Her hands in my hair, my hands at her jaw(really fucking nice jaw by the way). Kissing her made me feel alive. I whimpered into her mouth. We still had all our clothes on but I felt naked. I was drowning in want.

And then she went home.

I felt raw. Drunk. High. Aching. Deeply frustrated that she had left(funnily enough this is actually a theme with girls I’ve fallen in love with, they leave me high and certainly not dry).

I imagined running into her at the park where I walked my dog every morning before work. The physical electric shock I felt each time I thought I glimpsed her made me nauseous. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

I wish there was a way to make you understand how physical my reaction to her was. And I don’t even mean just sexually, though fuck man I was pussy whipped, it was like lightening through me, it was jumping into cold water on a hot day and touching the pan in the oven and breathing that breathe that comes too fast in and out and in and out till your mind rings and you get dizzy. Heartbeat fast. Fingers shaking. Something boiling in my chest. When she would slip out the door in the mornings I would have to lay on the floor. Physically unable to do anything but giggle into my fingers

I was like this our entire relationship. Though the nausea would become too much, the anxiety of knowing how badly I would be hurt when the relationship inevitably ended. Because she did not want a relationship. And I had agreed. I don’t think there was any way for me to say no to her. Love at first sight makes you super dumb. Like really. Truly. I did not shut up about her(sorry to all my friends who had to experience this). I sat swiping through her dating app pictures like a moron. Addicted to the feeling seeing her made me feel. Grasping for it at any chance I had.

We watched movies and talked for hours at restaurants and in bars. She told me when she was little she worried a ghost was watching her and she wasn’t scared, just worried the ghost would see her do something weird and judge her for it. I found every story she told me endearing.

She almost exclusively used Snapchat to communicate (yeah look red flag BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH HER), that specific notification sound made me jump each time it buzzed.

I had not been in therapy for about a year. And I was all sorts of crazy. I was desperately. Terribly. Embarrassed to love her. I felt shame all the way down to my toes. I felt weak. My notes app was tired of my little fingers typing out every thought(y’all are lucky I didn’t have substack at the time cause damn that would have been a shit show). I remember it occurring to me that I was ashamed. I remember thinking she could tell I loved her. Worrying that I’d accidentally blurt it out. Had to look away when she looked too closely in my eyes.

It didn’t help that she made me see stars when we were in bed. That with me she melted into something softer. Tried to coax me into boldness. Whispered honeyed words about every little thing about me. Curled the hair behind my ears. Closed her eyes as I washed her face in the shower, my gentle fingers over her freckled cheeks. But the thing is, I thought she loved me too. There was a fear reflected in her brown eyes. A terror that felt like mine.

We dated for a little over two months. She asked me out for dinner after she was released from covid isolation. I texted my best friend to tell her I thought she was going to break up with me. While I waited for her to pick me up I paced my room. Light headed in the way I always was but it had turned frosted. We ate dinner and went back to my house. Sat on the couch and kissed in a hungry way that made me want more but nothing else happened. She broke up with me there. I asked if she wanted to hear something embarrassing. Told her that I loved her through tears. She cupped my check and tried to make me believe it wasn’t embarrassing. She asked what my rose, thorn, bud, were of our relationship and I don’t remember our answers but I remember feeling like this was a perfect ending. A kind ending. She asked me to be friends but I could not do it.

She left and I collapsed. Lay face down in the shower. Called in sick to work the next day and curled up hunched in bed in a stupor. My dear friend and her girlfriend drove 2 hours to bundle me into the car and drive me to the beach. I couldn’t even get dressed. We vaped out the windows and talked about how it happened. I felt cold. They dropped me at another friends house, still in my pyjamas, her boyfriend looked after me till she came home from work. Shame was coiled inside of me, a snake in a hulking shape.

I saw her shadow in all the places I had been excited to run into her just weeks before. Every spot that had been a hopeful chance became dripping with fear. The only thought that soothed me was imagining sliding a knife between my ribs and slicing through my heart. Every time she flickered through my thoughts I would pull out the knife. Scratch the surface. Put it back. I thought about how I wanted to really do it. how good it would feel. It was calming. It was several times an hour. It went on like this for months. My notes app filling.

Her car was fucking pink and there were maybe 2 of them around. I swear I saw it daily. Each time felt like a slap. But I never saw her during those first months apart. She was a ghost.

I didn’t have any regrets though. I’m proud that I let my dissociated ass fall in love even though it led me through so much pain. I don’t think I would have been prepared to love so fully if I had not gone through this experience. It taught me that love is not an embarrassing thing to feel. It taught me that I was capable of loving. And it led me to Emma.