To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

Happy Valentines Day! ❤️🥰

I hope that you all have a great day, it’s a celebration of love or another day to be alive – how awesome is that?

“To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” was one of those films that took me back to my younger, more naive self who grew up thinking I would one day meet my Prince Charming in shining armour who would carry me away and then we’d live happily ever after… 🤦🏻‍♀️

The Netflix film was a heavy inspiration to this post. Although I feel as though I have written posts like this before back on my older blogs (which you won’t try and dig up… please don’t 😂) Also side note: please take this all light heartedly and if you’re an ex, I hope you’re well 😆

With that little disclaimer done, here we go.

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To the boy in Y6,

Thanks for helping me get through that hover board level on Ratchet and Clank that I was stuck on for months. Even though I was sure this meant we were meant to be together, congratulations on getting married recently! 🎉

Love, you have no idea who I am

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To the boy I sat behind in English class,

You probably still don’t know who I am to this date, but you were one of my first crushes at school. It was a crush so intense I swear that every time we did interact – whether that was me borrowing a pen or purposely asking you a dumb question – it was what Shakespeare was writing about in his sonnets. It had to be.

I’d be that silly little girl who would watch you play football at lunch time and then try to hide behind a book when I thought you’d seen me stare for too long. Even though we didn’t talk much (literally not at all apart from the pen borrowing), I had this version of you in my mind that was what Prince Charming had to be. Destiny? I think so.

Being totally head-over-heels over you, 9 years ago, on this very day, I decided to give you a present to tell you how much I really liked you. And yep, you guessed it. I totally wrote about that on the internet.

Despite being the worse way to break a heart, you taught me that sometimes butterflies meant that I needed more peanut butter on my sandwich rather than it meaning that you were Romeo and I was Juliet.

Love, the girl that sat behind you 9 years ago

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To the boy in space,

Fireworks. Fiery hair. Firsts. Italian food. Hot chocolate at Starbucks. Gaming. Learning. Drumming. Your friends and mine? Charms that meant everything. Jazz music. Electro swing. The time in London.

It’s weird because I’ve written countless posts about you (mostly unpublished leading to one making the cut) but now, I’m struggling to write or even remember. I guess it hurt pretty bad, eh?

Our years together was were I did a lot of my growing up. I changed, and so did you. But one thing that never changed during our time together was that in my mind, you were the one I wanted to be with for a long time. Embarrassingly, it was evident on that day you left that we were totally on different pages and hadn’t been in sync in a while.

Months passed and you were still gone, I convinced myself that I couldn’t date again for the minimum of the time we were together. It hurt bad. Getting over you has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do…

Luckily “Shoutout To My Ex“ was released just in time. 😉

Although our time together ended with a lot of unanswered questions, I am so grateful for the incredible experiences and the equally terrible, life shattering ones too. They taught me that I am able to stand on my own two feet, perhaps even better without you.

Spoiler alert: I totally took over the world. 💁🏻‍♀️

I still want to hate you, but I can’t. So I hope that you’re taking over your world and/or space.

Our sudden break-up forced me to love myself, be independent, be self-reliant and inspired me to be a better person, a better partner. Thank you for everything you taught me – from those difficult Chemistry equations, getting on buses to swing dancing like no ones watching.

Love, 🐰

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To the boy that slid into my DMs,

It started with “Hey Pauline – I love your latest blog post!”

*swoon*

It was this blog post. That painted my whole first impression of you, and it was a great one.

The messages that followed was “Are you free at any point tomorrow to chat?” Excited about your excitement towards the cause, I agreed to meet you at lunch to talk about it in person.

The next day, we met under the bridge, outside the poster sale. You were wearing a bright green scarf. I found you so cute but the whole time I wanted to keep it as professional as possible. When you started talking, the passion and motivation poured out and it was the most attractive thing. I had never met someone who was so passionate about something like you before.

I couldn’t stop thinking about you and what we talked about for the rest of the day. It was so refreshing to hear a guy I sat with talk about something substantial rather than just “getting completely wasted” and football (hey, maybe I was going out on too many dates with too many wrong guys then…)

And then I just didn’t know what to do. I continued helping you out with your community. I continued tweeting. You continued following. And liking. And engaging. I did the same thing. At this point, I began to think that our relationship was just strictly professional, you know, helping each other out on the things we’re both interested in.

Until I was mentioned on a blog post, one written by you.

Completely ecstatic, I wrote a new year post and mentioned you in return. Was this flirting? Is this how you flirt nowadays? Is this how modern love stories unfold? 😂 Apparently so. After this obviously aggressive flirting, you invited me out to have Italian food and everything else sort of followed. All super fast but felt so right.

Now I wake up every morning and see you, still asleep (because you can’t hack my early mornings 😆) And I get to be by your side as you go about your day-to-day of slowly ruling the world. ✊🏻

Whenever I think about the saddest moments I’ve had because of boys that break my heart, I no longer feel anger and sadness, instead it is gratitude and appreciation. I learnt that sometimes, these events need to happen for me to get back onto the right path. Walking that rough, cobble road barefoot to meet you at the end of it was so worth it.

You gave me the faith to believe in love again. You taught me how to love again. You’ve shaped me to become an unapologetically confident woman and are not ashamed to shoutout about me or try to hide me away. I am the best version of myself today, because of your love and support.

I can’t predict what will happen in the future, but I know that I will continue doing everything that I can to work on us. There isn’t a love like ours. 💜

I feel crazy grateful that out of all the boys I’ve ever loved, I get to do all of this with you.

Love, Paw