I have been thinking quite a bit lately on the nature of love, about high school relationships, and about their significance. I feel the need to write something about it.
Many people criticize high school relationships as being shallow, meaningless.. confused teenagers caught up in their hormones, simply looking to explore their sexuality, or to find out what it’s like to be attached to another person. The people who think this way think of it like a test flight, something to give us the experience to succeed in a relationship when we’re older, but not something meaningful and concrete.
In my own observations as a high school student, I see what they mean, and I understand where they’re coming from. To an extent, I agree with them. The majority of high school relationships that I have seen don’t last very long, end for stupid reasons, or are simply matters of, “That guy is so hot, I’m totally going to ask him out.” I see this all the time, and for that reason, I planned on not getting involved in relationships in high school. Sure, I can think of several examples of relationships that I actually see working and continuing for the long term, but they are few and far between, and I felt like high school was for learning, for getting good grades so I can go on to a good college where I will be given the skills to have a successful career, and then worry about finding the ‘one’ person who is right for me after all that.
However, life likes to throw curve balls, and sometimes these curve balls are for the best. I’m now questioning everything that I once thought about whether teenagers are capable of forming serious relationships.
For those of you who don’t know, I have been in a relationship for four months now, nearing five, and the circumstances of it are quite unique. I have fallen deeply in love with my best friend from early early elementary school who moved two thirds of the way across the country when I was only seven years old. Through some miracle, we managed to keep in touch, and with the help of the internet, reestablished out friendship, though underneath it was slowly turning into something more than that. It’s incredibly difficult to describe, but I have thought I was in love in the past, and this is just not the same. We have so much in common that I feel she is perhaps the only person in my life who both understands me, and can relate as well.
So, I’m a senior in high school in a long-distance relationship. I’m applying to college. And due to the nature of my relationship, I really am forced to think about the future, and to think about it on a level that most people don’t have to. In order for our relationship to stop being long distrance, to become more real than it is, it’s going to have to affect my college decisions. I’m incredibly lucky in that my favorite college is hers as well, merely by coincidence, but I have yet to visit it, and I don’t really know for sure yet if it’s truly the right place for me. I think that it is, I hope that it is, but I have no way of knowing.
To attempt to come off of my personal tangent, there is but one question that remains in my mind. Will it last? Or can it last? If it lasts, is it for the best? Can high school relationships like this really work?
There is no way to find this answer. All I know is that here and now I want it to last more than anything else—she means the world to me. I think that people have to have certain qualities and maturity level to form long-term relationships in high school, but even if they do, they obviously have to be right for each other as well. I am hopeful. I feel bad for being doubtful, but I think these thoughts sit in the back of everyone’s mind when they’re in a relationship that has the potential to become incredibly serious. I think I’m done writing now. Sorry for the terribly long post (and the lack of any sort of meaningful conclusion).
