My First Love: Wasn’t a Person — It Was Words

 

My First Love

Don’t get any funny ideas — my first love ain’t a person. Apart from my parents (big smile), my true love has always been… words.

Yes, words. I am hopelessly, helplessly in love with them. They’ve been hopping in my little garden ever since I was a child, playful and clingy, demanding I chase them, catch them, and arrange them into something meaningful.

When I was nine, I got hooked — like a firefly chasing its own glow. Or maybe, it was the other way around: the words were chasing me, wrapping themselves around my thoughts, tugging at my sleeves, whispering, “Write me down before I disappear.”

While other kids collected toys, I collected notebooks filled with scribbles. While they played hide and seek, I was busy playing hide and seek with sentences. Words became my safe space, my playground, my secret diary of emotions I couldn’t always say out loud.

Even now, they still follow me everywhere. Sometimes they’re gentle, like raindrops tapping on a window. Other times they’re pesky and restless, like little children pulling at my shirt until I give them attention. But however they come, I never tire of them. They are my first and forever love.

And maybe that’s the thing about first loves: they don’t always arrive wrapped in roses or romance. Sometimes they arrive as letters on a page, sounds in your head, or tiny sparks that ignite whole worlds inside you.

For me, words are not just love. They’re home. They’re me.