Dirty blond hair, warm hazel eyes and a boyish grin are all what got me in an teenage tingle over Liam. Around him, my heart would pound around inside of my chest. Just being in the same room as him, left me feeling a giddy wreck inside.

The first time I actually laid eyes on him, he was too busy being a teenage boy with his friends and all of the other girls who adored him, to even notice my smitten existence. Yet over time, we did become friends. It was hard not to, I became friends with a lot of people he knew. Just friends, it would honestly become the bane of my thirteen year old life.

Liam had become the boy, to which I would compare all other boys to. Sure, I got asked out by some boys, but they never measured up to him...not even close.

I was thirteen, and never been kissed. But the boy who I wanted to kiss me, was busy kissing other girls. And stupidly, I made a pledge to myself that if I couldn't have Liam, I didn't want no one.

My closest friends at school thought I was silly to pin all of my teenage hopes onto just one boy, they would will me to go out with other boys, but I had already become an follow-your-heart kind of a girl. For me, it was Liam or no one. However, all of the confidence that I had painstakingly built up, was slowly being taken down by Liam's not wanting of me.

The hurt he caused, was to be the first hurt that I would achingly feel over a boy. The first seeds of pain for unrequited feelings. But that hurt was to become an ever deeper ache, an even rawer hurt...when one of my close friends from school began going out with Liam.

That pain.

That betrayal.

It feels just as raw today, as it was on the day that I had first found out about it.

"Did you know that Jody was asked out by Liam at the weekend?" Our mutual friend Gina had warily asked me.

Swallowing down my hard lump of hurt, I quietly answered with. "No, I didn't."

At the time, I just wanted to scream 'why?' and 'all those times I've talked about liking Liam, so why....please tell me why?' But I didn't scream. I didn't cry. Instead, I let Gina proceed to tell me the whole and hurtful story of how Jody and Liam had began going out with one another. After much adolescent flirting at the leisure centre, Liam eventually asked my friend out, and she eagerly had said yes.

It didn't seem to matter that I had liked him for as long as I had.

It didn't seem to matter that I was her friend.

None of it actually mattered.

She said yes, and that betrayal hurt more than I ever could express.

My friendship with Jody quickly dissolved. I couldn't remain friends with someone who had so willingly betrayed me like that. I was angry with her, but even more angry with Liam. He knew she was my friend. He knew that I liked him. Okay, if he didn't want me, that was fine, but to think it was okay to ask out one of my closest friends...wasn't fine at all.

The amount of tears I had cried over that boy.

The humiliation I had suffered over my liking of that boy.

I wasn't going to let that happen again.

So, I stopped hanging out where he was. I stopped asking about him. I just stopped everything that was to do with Liam.

"Liam has been asking where you've been?" Gina one day asked me during one of our classes together.

"I've been busy." Was my direct explanation for no longer choosing to go into town or to be at the youth club to hang out with any of them anymore.

"Jody really is sorry, you know?"

I remember just staring at my friend, then frowning with a dissatisfied shrug to my shoulders. "Not enough to apologise to me herself? And not enough to have not done it in the first place?" I was upset, and no amount of trying to smooth things over by Gina was ever going to stop me feeling upset.

I was upset for good reason. What happened between Jody and Liam had taught me yet another valuable lesson...

....friends, can and will hurt you, and so will boys.

So it was while I was on a French trip, that I kissed away my previous cares of Liam. I had my first proper kiss on the lips, with a handsome French boy in a barn; beneath a blanket of bright and twinkly French stars.

All of my practicing of how to snog, using pillows, the back of my hand and the sides of my index finger and thumb; had pleasantly paid off. Little did that handsome French boy know, how he had helped me to prove to my teenage self that there was a life beyond Liam....he may not have wanted me, but there were boys who did.

The ironic part to this tale, is that Jody and Liam soon did split up.

She eventually would apologise to me herself, but my trust in her would never return. Her betrayal to our friendship, was yet another one of life's scars, that I would internally have to bear.

I began to understand that when I was hurt, I really bloody hurt.

I also began to understand that when someone was behind that hurt, that person would become left behind in my life.

It was a coping strategy that I had defiantly gained.

You hurt me.

I become numb to you.

You become just another numb piece in my numb puzzle.

What of Liam, you ask?

Well, he would eventually go out with a girl who he would end up marrying and having children with. Years down the line, she would eventually cheat on Liam, leaving him lost and heartbroken, and to once again stumble back into my adult life just as I had began to see the man who I would eventually go on to marry.

On that night, Liam and I shared an honest heart to heart. He admitted to liking me a lot when we were kids, but was afraid to ruin our teenage friendship by asking me out. He admitted that he often wondered what would have happened if we had ended up together. That night, we laughed about how many tears I had cried over him. Over how many times he was a complete ass to me. We laughed how jealous he got over the time I went out with another popular boy at his school—a boy called Tony.

Oh my gosh, Tony had the whole James Dean thing going on. His very dark hair was heavily gelled, he always wore a black leather jacket, and his ice blue eyes were wise beyond his years. A lot of girls wanted Tony, but surprisingly, he wanted me.

He was way more mature than the other boys I knew, and I liked that about him. Yet at the same time, his maturity also intimidated me. Tony was said to have been very experienced with girls, while I was very inexperienced with boys—but to me, he was nothing but a gentleman.

Tony kissed nicely.

He held me nicely.

He treated me nicely.

Anything that we did together, he would always ensure that I was comfortable doing it with him. Which was why, Tony would become the boy who would always lay claim to being the first boy to have stuck his fingers inside of me. Being with him, was enjoyable. Being with him, helped me to maturely move my feelings on from Liam. To which, Liam freely had admitted on the night when our adult selves happened to bump into one another, to being absolutely gutted about.

The teenage Mary Rose would eventually finish with the lovely and experienced Tony. For as much as I liked him. For as much as I liked experimenting with him, I knew that I didn't want to sexually take things any further with him.

I wasn't ready for that.

Not with him or with anyone.

As empowered as I felt by being with Tony, deep down, I think I was still harbouring some unfinished feelings for Liam. Unrequited love, it had silently scarred me. It had made that numbness inside of me, numb that little bit more.

All of that numbness and that scarring, would go on to affect many of my future relationships. And funnily enough, it would be Liam himself who would convince me to not push away the man who would one day become my husband.

All of life's hurts, and the people who sometimes cause them...they can oddly happen for a reason.