At sixteen, I thought I knew what love was. I had no idea how much that first love would change everything.

Where It All Started 

I was in Year 11 when I first went back to Tonga to attend high school.

I had no idea what I was stepping into, and honestly had very little understanding of what love was supposed to look like.

There was a maturity and confidence about him that I hadn't encountered before.

He seemed to have a much clearer understanding of relationships than I did, while I was still trying to understand what it meant to let someone into my life in that way.

He was also the boy everyone seemed to know, and talked about. I think some of what drew me to him was simply the excitement of it all.

What I Never Saw Coming 

As our relationship continued, things between us became more complicated.

There were lies, things left unsaid, and a lot that I didn't fully understand.

Looking back, I can see that the relationship often felt more physical than emotional.

I didn't really know how to separate the two. We had been together for months when everything changed in a way I never saw coming.

He got married.

And I didn't find out from him.

My sister showed me a Facebook post about the wedding, on the same day it was happening.

I remember just staring at the screen. I didn't know how to react or even what to feel. I just wanted to cry out loud.

There was no conversation, no explanation, no warning. Just a post on a screen that suddenly made everything real.

What Came After

That was supposed to be the end of everything between us.

I came back to New Zealand, and for a while I tried to leave it all behind.

I thought that was where our story would end.

But when I returned to Tonga the following year, we crossed paths again.

We started talking, and somehow we found our way back into each other's lives.

By then, his marriage had ended and there was still something between us that neither of us seemed ready to let go of.

So, despite everything that had happened, we decided to give each other another chance.

Over the next few years, we would be together, then apart, only to reconnect again later.

Trying From Afar

Sometimes we were in Tonga, and other times we were long distance, with him in Australia and me back in New Zealand.

The distance never stopped us from making plans for the future.

We talked about marriage, building a life together, and what things might look like if we eventually made it work.

There were good moments between us too, and they made me believe that maybe, somehow, we could get it right.

But we were still figuring ourselves out, and our relationship came with its own struggles.

We hurt each other, we made mistakes, and neither of us always knew how to handle what we were going through.

The Breaking Point

Then I found out he was expecting a child with someone else.

What surprised me was that I wasn't angry.

I wasn't trying to fight for us or hold on like I had so many times before.

I just knew deep in my heart, right in that moment, this was it.

It was over.