Is It Possible to Really Love Someone Before the Age of Twenty-One?
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We were in my room. Two minutes ago, it would have been difficult to tell who was who. Not at this moment. I was still in my — very narrow — single bed; she was at the half-open window, satisfying the addiction to filling her lungs with soot.
I watched her…
The beautiful body, beautifully designed, as clear as milk, exuding the youth of seventeen. She only wore my shirt, which she had forgotten (?) to button. On one hand, the Marlboro box. "Light." Selected soot. In the other, the lit cigarette, being inhaled every ten seconds.
She looked at me…
And she saw me smile.
"What's it?"
"Nothing… I just think you're beautiful, even during another suicide attempt!"
"I'm not going to die of lung cancer, Juliano!"
"I hope not… It would be a waste!"
She stubbed out her cigarette. And she approached me:
"So you don't want me to die?"
"What do you think?"
Then she smiled, showing her beautiful teeth… She brushed my hair off my forehead… She walked over… And said:
“I think I love you!”
It was my time to smile. I couldn't help it. I knew this moment would come at some point in my life. That was the one! I couldn't hold my lips:
“I think I do too!”
Yes, of course, there is love before 21. Love is not a matter of maturity. Maybe it's immaturity. Love before age twenty-one, perhaps first love is usually the strongest. Because we still don't have barriers, footsteps, mistrust. It's love in its rawest form. And most of us jump right in when the opportunity arises.
The big problem is that the pool is usually empty…
But, yes, we can definitely love before we are twenty-one. Maybe we can't love that much after twenty-one.
