Take me back to the night we met...

I was playing music on my phone the other night when The Night We Met by Lord Huron started playing. It’s strange how a song can sit quietly in your playlist for years, waiting for the exact moment to tap you on the shoulder and pull you back in time.

I first heard that song in 2017, when I was a junior in college. My best friend and I were huge YA novel fans, so when 13 Reasons Why came out on Netflix, we devoured it instantly. And I remember the exact moment that song played in the show — slow, haunting, heavy in a way that settles into your bones. Something about it hit me then, but hearing it now hit me differently. Older. Sharper. Closer to the truth.

Because it reminded me of the night I met my first boyfriend.

I wouldn’t say he was my first love — honestly, I still don’t really know how to define “first love.” I’ve felt something almost like it before him and something almost like it after. And the song itself wasn’t even about that kind of love. It had its own meaning, its own pain, its own story. But the title alone made something in me ache. It made me want to go back to that night — not because I miss him, not because I still love him (I don’t), but because I wish I could rewrite that version of myself.

I wish I could meet that girl again before he did.

Because sometimes I feel like that was the last night I was the version of myself that I actually liked. The version that wasn’t yet bruised in places no one could see. The version that still believed in gentle things. The version that hadn’t yet learned that some people walk into your life just to leave you with a wound you’ll carry long after they leave.

After him, everything shifted. I don’t know if it was for the better. I learned things — many things — but not all lessons feel like growth. Some feel like slow, quiet damage. And I’ve always hated the version of myself I became because of him. Or maybe not because of him — maybe because I allowed myself to shrink, to bend, to question the parts of me that never needed questioning.

I regret him. And I regret the girl who thought she needed someone like him just to feel wanted.

Back then I was surrounded by girls my age who already had relationship experience. Everyone seemed so grown, so sure, so perfectly placed in the world, and I felt like I was arriving late to everything — love, confidence, adulthood. I was insecure about my appearance, even though I can admit now that I wasn’t unattractive. But when you’ve been bullied your whole childhood, when people have picked apart your features before you’ve even learned to love them, you grow up believing you’re less. And that belief sinks its teeth deep.

So in college, I tried to “fix” myself. Improve my looks. Catch up. Because I thought boys only noticed girls who were perfect, or close to perfect. And I desperately wanted to be noticed—not because I craved male validation, but because I wanted proof that I wasn’t what they said I was growing up.

And then I met him.

He wasn’t special in the way people write love stories about. But at the time, he was special to me simply because he looked at me like I was worth something. And when you’ve spent years believing you aren’t, even the wrong person can feel like a lifeline.

But he wasn’t a lifeline. He was a door I shouldn’t have walked through.

Looking back, I wish I could tell that girl — that younger, hopeful, insecure version of me — that she didn’t need him to validate her existence. That she was already enough, even with all the scars she tried so hard to hide.

And there’s a lyric in the song that has always lingered in the back of my mind:
“I’ve been searching for a trail to follow again…”

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing all these years.
At this age, almost ten years later, I’ve been searching for a trail to follow again — not to him, but to her. To the girl I was before the night we met. To the innocence I didn’t realize I was about to lose. To the version of myself I never got to fully grow into because I handed too much of her away too early.

Sometimes I just want to go back and tell myself:
You don’t need to go down this road. You are not as unlovable as you think. You don’t have to earn someone’s attention by sacrificing the softest parts of you.

I wish I had loved myself then the way I love myself now.

Because maybe the real heartbreak isn’t losing him — it’s losing the version of me I’m still trying to find again.Tke