I’ve never been kissed, and I’m not talking about the classic Drew Barrymore movie. At 18 years old, I still haven’t had my first kiss.
There are a lot of people who are in the same boat. I feel like there is this stigma when it comes to your age and love life. All of my friends in high school had boyfriends and I was always the third wheel. They never made me feel bad for it, but I constantly got the “You’re not missing out!” and “Your time will come!” spiel whenever I brought up my lack of a love life. Everyone always told me that I’d have no problem finding someone when college rolled around, but with my first semester quickly coming to an end, I am still very much single. It wasn’t until recently that saying the words, “I’ve never had my first kiss” didn’t make me feel bad.
My parents have a pretty epic love story. My mom was only twenty-two when she tied the knot with my dad. They celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in June of this year and they are still very much in love. I was raised with their relationship as an example of how my life should be. They met young, married young, and had kids young. The older I got, the scarier it felt knowing that my window for a young marriage was gonna come to a close in my early twenties.
I feel differently now though. I am not my mom. Our stories are completely different. I am 18 years old and I’ve never been kissed, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. Don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed because society expects you to. As my friends in relationships have said, our time will come.