When was it again? When did I start behaving like this? No, I've always been like this as far back as I can remember.
When I was a child I'd scream and cry for hours if anything I liked was taken away from me. Even people. The doctors at the time couldn't explain this bizarre behavior. Most chalked it up to having severe separation anxiety, but one, one described what I was experiencing as being highly obsessive. He explained it as me wanting to keep everything I saw as mine close to me. My family didn't believe him. They called him a quack of a doctor and I never saw him again. I, however, found out he was right.
In the second half of my fourth grade year I fell in love. I fell so hard that I never fell out of it. From elementary school to University I followed that person wherever they went. When they moved so did I. When they chose a club I'd go to every event I could. Eventually in high school I started secretly taking photos of them. Soon enough it became the only way to calm my anxieties about not being near them. It became the only way I could show my affection towards them. I had photos of every major achievement or milestone in their life after high school.
The day they got their first job, the day they made nationals, the day they got second place at track and field nationals, the day they got accepted into a prestigious college. I had collected so many of these kinds of photos and I cherished each and everyone of them.
Today I was hanging up a new one. Today's photo was of the day they got their first job in college. I pulled out a red thumbtack and pushed it through the white part of the photo at the top. It made a gentle crunch sound as it pierced through the cork behind it. I stroked the face of my love as I admired the picture. Then I took a step back to appreciate my whole collection. A full cork board wall decorated with their photos.
A sense of pride pooled in the pit of my stomach. I was still in love with my first love after all these years and it would remain that way for the rest of my life.