My first girlfriend. The last thing she ever said to me as my girlfriend was "I love you." The very next day she got onto a flight to Singapore for a 3 month holiday with her family. She never told me she was going. This was before the time of facebook/internet/mobile phones, so I had no way of contacting her. I had to learn from our friends that she had left, and that she had apparently broken up with me.

I was distraught. Confused. I waited in agony for three months and her to return so that she could clear the doubt. She couldn't have broken up with me! The last thing she said was "i love you."

When she finally returned, we spoke on the phone and I immediately brought it up. She casually laughed it off and said she was about to shower and would call me back. I ended the call with "I love you" hoping that she would say it back. She didn't. And she didn't call back. I called again and again, and every day she had excuses. Dinner, homework, chores, and then babysitting.

Babysitting. That was the time when we used to spend hours on the phone together. Or when she would sneak me into her house so we could make out and do stupid things teenagers do. It was our time. It was never an excuse. Why now? I lost it!

Fear and sadness turned into anger and disbelief. For the first time I took her off her pedestal and told her what a cruel person she was for messing up my feelings like this. She knew how much she had meant to me. She knew for me to shout and scold at her like that was killing me inside. She began to cry over the phone. She apologized and then told me the truth.

She wanted to break up with me. She didn't know how. Even at her young age, she knew the extent of my love for her (love or what felt like love at the time). She knew I wouldn't have let her. I would have stopped her. Threatened to hurt myself. She was right.

So she wanted me to hate her. She left for three months without telling. Lied to me. Told everyone but me that we were over. So I would hate her. And I did. For a while.

I was silent. It ended silently. I knew there was no point fighting. I was 16 then. I am 28 now. I still think about her much more than I should. I'm in a happy relationship now. But I'm so ashamed to say that the happiest I've ever felt in a relationship was when she said "i love you." I still remember how she said it the last time she said it, and how i felt. It's sad that perhaps the last time I will ever feel truly in love again was the construct of a lie.