The Unshakeable Ache

“So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for.”

-H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

I learned yesterday that my first boyfriend passed away unexpectedly.

When someone close to your age leaves the world—especially someone who lived in the early, formative chapters of your life—it feels like a part of you goes with them. It’s not just their absence that hurts. It’s the closing of a door you didn’t realize had stayed open all this time—the one that led back to your teenage years, your first experiences of love, your gentleness before life asked you to be harder.

When someone from that time passes, it’s like those days shift out of reach. The memories don’t disappear, but they get quieter, more fragile. Like old film reels kept in a dusty box. You can watch them in your mind, but you can’t step back into them.

Grief has a way of arriving sideways.

I didn’t realize how much space he still held in my heart until it cracked open.
I didn’t realize that some part of me—maybe a very quiet part—was still holding on to the idea that we’d give it another try.
Or maybe we’d just watch another movie together.
Just one more… something.

There are people you assume you’ll have more time with.
People who feel timeless in your memory, like they exist just outside the edges of your present life, waiting to reappear when the moment is right.
They carry the soft weight of what-ifs and second chances.
And when they’re gone, they take all of that with them.

That’s what it feels like to lose someone who once held your heart:
like a light has gone out in a room you didn’t realize you were still visiting.
Like a part of your foundation—your tenderness—has quietly cracked.

If only we knew how little time we have with the people we love.
If only we picked up the phone the moment we thought about them.
If only we lived like nothing was guaranteed—because it isn’t.

I was fifteen when he asked me to be his girlfriend.
I hadn’t quite found “my people” yet, hadn’t grown into myself.
But he welcomed me into his world like I belonged there.
He made room for me at the lunch table, in his circle, in his heart.
He introduced me to music and movies that would stay with me forever.
He was thoughtful, darkly funny, and quietly brilliant.
He made it okay to be different—because he was, too.

There was a tether between us that I didn’t fully understand back then.
And even though we were young—and my stepdad’s rules made it impossible for us to be a “real” couple—what we shared was still real.

I remember having to ask him to wear khakis to my house, just to appease my stepdad.
I was so angry. I hated that I was being put in that position.
I loved the way he dressed.
Anyone else might have been offended, resisted, made it a thing.
But Andrew? He smiled and said okay.
He wore them.
Not because he had to, but because he wanted to see me.

That’s just who he was—kind, patient, quietly generous.

I think of us sitting in my dining room, eating Chinese food.
He was so tickled seeing me eat—like it was some sweet, ordinary milestone he didn’t want to forget.

Or the time I accidentally knocked over his orange soda in the courtyard at school, and I felt like I wanted to disappear from embarrassment.
He just hugged me and laughed.
Like it didn’t matter.
Like I still mattered.

We saw each other once more a few years later, after I moved to Texas.
He was already living there.
We made cookies and watched Downfall.
He met my cat, Bella.
We only had a few hours together.
And I wish I had hugged him longer that night.
I wish I had said more.

He was an artist. A real one.
He painted, sketched, sculpted.
He was sharp, brilliant, layered, and loyal.
He had this dark humor and quick wit.
And he didn’t like that he had a good heart—he didn’t want the world to see him as soft.
But with me, he never pretended.

He let the softness show.
And I never forgot it.

And now I’ve realized—this isn’t just the loss of a first love.
It’s the loss of the kind of love it was.

The kind that was pure.
That was safe.
That didn’t require you to perform or change or prove anything.
The kind that made you feel safe being exactly who you already were.

And even now, through the tears and the ache and the weight of everything unsaid,
he’s helping me find a way through.

Not down.
Not out.
But through.

This writing, this remembering—it’s him.
Still showing up.
Still encouraging me to shape the pain into something soft.
Still helping me find the light in the room that went dark.
Still loving me, in his own beautiful way.

And still—
I find myself feeling like that outsider again.
Like the girl with no one to invite her to the lunch table.

He didn’t believe in angels.
But I do.
Because I have to.

Because I need to believe I won’t have to walk through the rest of this life
without him with me
in some way.