First "love"

I was given a fantastic idea from one of my friends. I should write about love. Love can be a beautiful thing and also a painful thing. Everyone wants to find love and be loved. They not only want to love someone else but they want to be in love. Ever since preschool I’d say I love you to whomever I was “dating”. Then my sophomore year in high school I met a girl who I was instantly attracted to and I thought it was love at first sight. My junior year we began dating and I thought she was perfect. We would go to the lake just to skip rocks. One night I made a stay at home date with glow sticks and all her favorite food and drinks. She would buy my lunch whenever my mom didn’t put my lunch money into my bank account. She would play softball or baseball with my little siblings.Sounds pretty perfect right now right? What I didn’t add in was we argued all of the time. I put my heart and soul into that relationship but it wasn’t good enough. I felt like I would never be good enough. She once created a fake person that acted like they liked her. That lie lasted a week and she knew I was crying myself to sleep every night of it. I eventually called her out on it.
There were so many little lies. She would fake phone calls with her mom. The worst thing she did though was telling me she had cancer. She told me this when we started dating and I was very skeptical about it but I couldn’t just say you’re lying because what if she was telling the truth. She would tell me that her doctors didn’t think she would live to a certain age. It broke my heart because I loved her and didn’t want to think of life without her. After my first surgery and I was in the hospital she was at prom with her ex-boyfriend. She claims she was drugged. But she wasn’t. After my second surgery she told me she was going to be having surgery herself and that there was high risk of dying. So I called her work and asked if she was there. Of course she was. That’s how I was able to confirm my doubts about her. There is a lot more messed up things she did or said. She even punched me. Yet I stayed with her because I thought it was love.
It wasn’t love though. Love takes two people not just one who pour every bit of themselves into the relationship. So I guess technically I have never had my first love. Although, I want so badly to be in true love with someone and they with me. So I will just keep waiting until I find her. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let myself be in a relationship again. I will never let a girl who supposedly loved me hit me or hurt just as badly emotionally.