First love. The reason everyone’s first love is beautiful is not only because the love was pretty. At the time of first love, there was a youthfulness that didn’t know how to be wise, a me who was pure to the point of cruelty, and a you whose fire I couldn’t handle. It’s because I already know that I can never go back to that youthful, innocent, passionate time.

 

First love is reckless. Without calculating, it throws everything in with pure passion, and inevitably fails. But that’s why it’s dramatic

—the reckless tales wrapped up in experiences or feelings that you can never have again.

 

First love is a time. Once it passes, it’s gone. Now you have to give a new love and a new time a chance. It might not be the experience or the purity of first love, but out of that scar is a love that grows and becomes a little more mature

—you have to wait for an adult love. Only those who wait can dream of love.

 

When romance passes, life comes. Purity gets dirtied, passion freezes over, and youth turns to shrewdness as you age. That innocent era’s first love becomes fatigued and exhausted daily routine… and is why first love appears to be something that can’t be realized. Because those who succeed at realizing their first love… don’t tell you.

 

Succeeding at first love is nice too. There’s comfort that’s even better than your favourite sweater, but also an excitement that you can find when you’re tired of that comfort. As childhood playmates, as first loves, as lovers, and as husband and wife, we live through the same times, share the same memories, and grow old together. A familiar excitement. It’s nice.

 

- Yoon Yoon Jae (Reply 1997)

 

This is very beautiful and saddeningly accurate.