I Learned to Look for Love Everywhere, but He was My First

I was very young when intimacy entered my life. Not because I was reckless. Not because I didn’t care about myself. But because I was grieving, unsupervised, and desperate for somewhere that felt safe.

I had been spending time with him since the spring after my mom died. I was eleven then — turning twelve — and everything in my world had already shifted. My house felt unpredictable. Nights felt long and loud. Adults were distracted, drinking, or gone. I was learning how to survive loss without guidance, and how to be alone before I understood what that meant.

He wasn’t just someone I liked. He was my best friend. He was my sunshine when the world felt dark. He knew what my home felt like. He knew the nights were scary. He knew what it meant to lose your mom and not know where to put the pain. When everything else felt unstable, he felt steady. Familiar. Safe.

After my mom died — and especially as the chaos in my house continued — he became my refuge. When I didn’t want to be home alone at night, his mom would sometimes let me stay over. That mattered more than I understood at the time.

It meant I could sleep. It meant I didn’t have to listen for noises outside my window.

It meant I could feel like a kid again, even briefly. His mom still treats me like family when she sees me, twenty years later. That’s how real that safety was.

As I got older, our relationship changed in ways I wasn’t emotionally equipped to understand. I was still a child navigating grief, fear, and abandonment, and “closeness” felt like relief. I truly believe he was my first love — not in a dramatic sense, but in the way someone becomes your anchor when everything else feels like it’s drifting.

What mattered most wasn’t physical. It was emotional way before the physical started. With him, my body could finally relax. With him, the fear quieted. With him, I wasn’t alone. He didn’t take anything from me that I didn’t want to give. He gave me refuge during a season when I had very little. But when you learn early that safety comes through attachment, it shapes you.

Your nervous system remembers what it feels like to finally exhale.Your heart remembers what it feels like to be chosen. And when that safety disappears — as it eventually did — the loss cuts deeper than words.

Being wanted made me feel real. Being close made me feel safe. Being chosen made me feel like I mattered. So I attached. Quickly. Deeply. Intensely. After the first one walked away, it was like something triggered it my mind and all I wanted was that feeling again.

What matters here is what it taught me.

After him, I kept searching — not for attention, not for validation, but for that same feeling of relief. I attached quickly. I stayed longer than I should have. I confused intensity with intimacy and closeness with protection.

This is how addiction prepares the ground long before substances ever appear. Not through rebellion. Not through recklessness. But through longing. I didn’t learn to look for love everywhere because I didn’t value myself.

I learned because love once made the fear stop — and I didn’t yet know another way to feel safe.

I didn’t bounce from boy to boy because I didn’t care. I stayed, clung, hoped, and waited because connection felt like oxygen. When a relationship ended, it didn’t just hurt — it destabilized me. The loss felt physical. Like the ground disappearing under my feet.

Looking back now, I can see it clearly: boys became the way I managed my nervous system. They were how I escaped loneliness.

How I silenced fear. How I avoided sitting alone with grief I didn’t know how to hold. They were my first addiction.

But people are not meant to be medication. They leave. They change. They fail. And every time that happened, the crash felt unbearable.

That’s when I turned inward.

When attention stopped working, I needed something stronger. Something I could control. Something that didn’t depend on someone else staying. That’s when self-harm entered my life — quietly, privately, and deceptively effective…

God,

I bring You the child who found safety where she could. The one who learned to rest in connection before she learned to rest in You. Thank You for the people who offered protection when my world felt unstable. For love that was real, even if it wasn’t permanent. For shelter I was given when I needed it most. Heal the places where attachment became survival. Hold the grief that still lives quietly inside me. Teach my heart that I no longer have to search for safety. You are steady. You are present. You are faithful.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower