wikepedia defines the term philophobia as the fear of falling in love or emotional attatchment. personally, i feel as though i struggle with this. my mind is completely shut out from the idea of being infatuated with someone, because, in all honestly, it terrifies me. with love, comes hardships. the two go hand in hand, and althought i've experienced love (both the good and the bad), i am still afraid of the side effects. 

the fights, the break ups, the lonely nights filled with tears and ice cream. those are the things my fragile heart can't take. with a mind like mine, assumptions are endless. these assumptions in particular can range from someone taking too long to text back or simply the way someone looks at me. if something begins to turn bad, i feel the sudden erge to run and never look back. i tend to assume the worst, because pessimistic people such as myself only see the negative side to things. 

perhaps my thought process was the reason to my failed love story. i admit i wasn't the easiest to deal with, sometimes i was too much. petty arguments would circulate between the two of us until it was too much to bare. all because of my endless need of attention and my abused trust issues, i lost something dear to me. but with love, also comes lessons. while the relationship may have ended, the memories will never fade. 

if i were to drive around my small town, i could pinpoint exact locations that mean something special to me. places such as where i first met him, or the place we shared our first kiss. with a town this size, it isn't exactly hard to remember the details. everything and everyone just kind of fit together like pieces of a puzzle. 

    high school is a touchy subject. when we were younger, we had childish minds filled with a yearning for endless candy and the hopes of becoming a princess. but as time goes on, change is inevitable. the friends you thought you'd never let go of, become hard to hold on to. the honest truth? childhood friendships rarely live to see the halls of high school. 

walking into columbia high my very first day of freshman year, i had a goal—do whatever i had to do to make it out alive. my circle of friends were the same ones i had since primary school. i was innocent, and i was clueless. if i knew then what i know now, i would have slapped some sense into my fourteen year old self.

i had always seen movies that portrayed high school in a somewhat intense manner. you had the jocks and the nerds. but what about the people in between the two? what about the people you couldn't quite put a lable on? the movies never really showed those. if you weren't popular, you were irrelevant. but if you weren't a nerd, did that make you the lowest of the low? 

so when i entered high school, you can only imagine what my mindset was. of course, popularity wasn't exactly a priority of mine. i had suffered through the extremities of wanting to be in the "it" crowd enough in middle school. i didn't exactly have a plan as to what i wanted my label to be. i just wanted to fit in, to show people that i was just one of the ones that didn't really have their shit figured out yet. 

i don't like to dwell much on my freshman year, which i personally find odd. it was a year of drastic change, and yet i don't particularly care to reminisce on the details of my innocent hardships. little things evolved into big things, and those big things seem to consume my life over time. i lost alot that year. but with those losses came gains. 

within a year, i somehow managed to lose the friends i held closest to me, i became cool with people i would have never imagined, and i felt my first taste of teenage love. the events of my very first year of high school are some that i will never be able to undo, though that simple fact doesn't exactly hurt me. while i had pictured my freshman year to be much different, those first high school memories i made have a special place in my heart. 

looking back now, i wish i could have changed a few things—nothing major. my feelings were too deep, too sensitive. and that seemed to drive me to my own insanity. i became attatched to every little detail that made up my life, and i clung to those factors. i was scared that if i loosened my grip, my life would spiral out of control. and i guess, it kind of did. 

i loathed change, but what i didn't realize is that my fight to hold on to old times were only doing worse damage. what i missed was the memories, the old ones that i had made before the idea of high school even crossed my mind. the people that used to mean the world to me, were completely different people. there was no more standing in the street at two am, eating hot cheetos. those late night conversations about the future of our friendship had simply turned into sending out our snapchat streak each day and carrying on with our own separate lives. and while those friendships may be ended or are close to it, the love i have for those people will forever remain constant. 

so look to the people you cherish in this very moment. appreciate them. tell them you love them. because when it comes down to it, a childhood friendship is no match to the wickedness that is high school. 

--

little authors note: im going to go more in depth into my freshman year, and columbia as a whole later down the road. right now, i'm just kind of laying out what this whole book is going to be based on. 

and ive decided against like narrative stuff. this will be more along the lines of my take on my own life and my own personal views of high school, friendship, love, columbia, etc etc. sort of like my diary that you get to read (:

another funny thing about high school, is that the fairytales aren't true. sadly, romance within our generation has simmered down to practically nothing. the cute movie and diner dates have turned into sliding in her dms. actual love is only a lie someone will tell just so that they can get below the waist band of your underwear. with these ideas crammed into my head, love within the walls of high school seemed impossible to me.

but another mind boggling thing about high school is that certain people enter your life for a specific reason. of course, plenty of important people had already come and gone within my first few months as a freshman, but they were only preparing me for what was to come. or rather, who was to come. the last thing on my mind was the idea of finding someone who meant the world to me, someone to take away the pain that came with being a teenager in this generation. as i said in my very first chapter, i was innocent and i was clueless. 

the november of my freshman year was a strange period of time for me. around that time, i had a total of one friend, who was two grades above me. seeing as i was four months into my first year, the sensational feeling that came with the idea of being in high school had already burned out. with the colorguard season already wrapped up for the year, i had nothing to do in my freetime but sit in my bedroom and watch meaningless youtube videos until my contacts bore into my eyeballs. of course, i hadn't discovered my love of all things wreckless at this point in time. i was still the same alex i had been all the years before. 

this very month in particular, however, was the month i met one of the most important people in my life to this day. it was a fairytale-esque scenario, even though i was no cinderella and he was no prince charming. i would pass him in the hallways, and my knees would go weak. he was so different—so different from me, that was for sure. maybe that's what drew me in. he had a sense of danger that made my heart skip beats everytime he was even within my proximity. 

i didn't exactly know much about him besides his name, but his reputation was enough to scare me into avoiding him. like the clichè high school movies, i was invisible to him, but it didn't bother me. of course, i had already established in my mind that i didn't have a chance in hell with him. a girl can dream though, can't she? 

maybe it was his smile that i was attracted to, or the way his mouth curled up and his eyes crinkled when he laughed. maybe it was the bad boy vibe he seemed to have down to a science, or just the way he carried himself in general. it was obvious he had no care in the world, and that, to me, was a beautiful thing. i had always struggled with this burning desire to be liked, and i always, always cared. but him? he was effortless, and i was so attracted to it. 

so when i was told by a mutual friend amongst the two of us that my dream guy wanted my number, you can imagine the excitement that ran through me. 

at the time, i was smart enough not to let myself get in too deep. i told myself to prepare for the worst, seeing as it was my first high school relationship and his past wasn't exactly squeaky clean when it came to females. i wanted us to work out so badly, but in the back of my mind i couldn't help but think how much of a flop it was going to turn into. i guarded my heart all because of the simple fact i relied on others' opinions of him to base my own around. 

the talking stage was the most excruciating part of the whole ordeal. i knew i wanted him—i had known for a long time. but what i didn't realize then was that i didn't even know him, yet i was so eager to rush into a relationship with him. i was too willing to give him the title of being my very first high school boyfriend. i mean, we texted every single day and talked on the phone before we would go to sleep. i had even gained enough courage to talk to him at school in front of other people. but i had always wonder how he was feeling towards me then. 

the answer to that came two long months later when he finally asked me to be his girl friend. of course, i said yes, seeing as i had awaited that moment for such a long time. looking back now, i don't see why he even wanted me in the first place. i was your typical good girl with straight a's, few friends, and my virginity still in tact. he was the total opposite, which scared the living hell out of me. with that fear, however, came this rush of adrenaline that left me with a burning desire to change my ways. 

there was a small problem, though. i feared affection. all i had ever experienced in my lifetime before he came along was an innocent peck on the lips and hand holding. other than that, i was clueless and i was scared. even the simple thought of giving myself to someone in an intimate way chased chills up my spine.  

despite all this fear, he made things easy. he was understanding, and he never pushed me further than what i felt myself capable of. i even remember the eruption of butterflies just from our sweet first kiss. the feeling, of course, isn't the hardest thing to forget considering i felt the same butterflies each and every time we kissed in the year and some months that followed our first one. 

within the first few months of our relationship, i had become an addict. i craved him all day, everyday. just his presence made me feel like i had some sort of super power. when i was with him, i entered a peaceful and carefree state of mind that i had never experienced before. he had become so incredibly important to me in such a small amount of time, and all those walls i had built tumbled down with just a flash of his smile. we became so close, in more ways than one. 

to spare the gorey and personal details of our relationship, i'll simply summarize it the best i can. we struggled with certain things, as all relationships do. since we were such different people, we didn't always see eye to eye. of course, our infamous cycle of breaking up and making up had become well known amongst our peers. we couldn't leave eachother alone, or maybe we just didn't want to. our relationship lived to see another year, despite the pessimistic theories i had in the beginning. 

people always ask me if i still love him, which is so funny to me. of course i still love the boy. i couldn't stop even if i tried. we may have had our ups and downs, but when it comes down to it, the year and few months i spent as his girl was the best time of my life. 

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authors note (:

LMAO I WANTED TO SAY SOOO MUCH MORE BUT I REALLY DONT WANNA PUT OUR BUSINESS OUT LIKE THAT 

im gonna talk some more abt him so dont worry but this is the basic background. i think im gonna kinda give overviews of the topics im gonna talk about and then eventually go into them more in detail. 

sorry this chapter took so long. i kinda deleted the app lmao (: