Midnight In Philadelphia by Lifehouse

This is a very personal song, and I wouldn't even put it on here accept that it was tied to a very important time of my life. I was in love, not just high school love, with a guy and wanted to marry him someday. We dated my senior year, and as graduation drew nearer, I was having a hard time. I wanted to go to college and live the life I thought everyone else was living. I was so stressed about graduating and becoming an adult, and being out on my own, I got tunnel vision. I couldn't see this great person in my life, and so I backed off a little. I was still in love with him and wanted to just give it a little time, knowing I'd be back with him soon. Well, he met someone while I was trying to decide what the heck I wanted, makes sense. He didn't come to my graduation, and I really wanted him to because I barely graduated and it was important to me. That night was bittersweet for me. I was so happy to be done with school and wanted to celebrate, but I also knew that it was over, this wonderful, magical time of my life with this guy.  I was right, because a couple of weeks later he told me he was proposing to this girl. He kept pushing me to tell him what I thought and I could barely breathe let alone pour out my soul, but I did anyway. I told him I loved him and that begged him not to leave, but he did. I remember that night perfectly. I was sitting in my room, crying so hard that it didn't make a noise. To this day, I have never cried that hard since. Everyone was asleep and had no idea any of this was happening. I turned on my cd player and put in my Lifehouse CD and played this song. I sat in my closet and went through everything, hating myself for being so scared to be with him, and hating that someone else was going to marry him. That night was the loneliest night, and this song was loneliest song for me. Eventually I turned off the light, got into bed, and wished I could fall asleep.

Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi

This song was purely a love song for me. In 2008-09, I was in love. I had been in love before but that seemed like nothing compared to this feeling. The guy in this stage of my life was a classic rock, motorcycle-driving, leather jacket- wearing guy and I was crazy about him. I was having minor health problems that year and he was having major back problems so we were kind of the lazy couple. He'd come over and we'd play guitar hero. This was our favorite song to play and it naturally became our song. It was perfect for us because our relationship was new, we were so crazy about each other and we had absolutely no idea what would happen, but we were on for the ride. So, this was the love song of 2008.

For The Longest Time by Billy Joel

After the big heartbreak, I eventually moved on and met someone in a different place in life than I was at. I was seventeen (going on eighteen ;) ) and going through the normal changes of being a senior, thinking about the future and college, and he was twenty, stuck in between high school and college with some back problems he was trying to sort out. We met in this in between world and thought we'd stumble along together. He told me to listen to this song one night and at the time I didn't really like it, it seemed like a negative song to me. But months later I understood the song and it's meaning, and why he liked it so much. Like I said, we were both in between stages in our lives and it was nice to feel love again and enjoy someone again. The expression that you don't get over someone until you fall in love with someone else was always true in my case. I saw a real future with this guy and wanted everything with him. We seemed to fit together perfectly and it was just easy with us. This song, for me, was about a time that I got to remember the feeling of love and laughter in my life. Later it became the saddest song ever, but we'll get to that.

Cold As You by Taylor Swift

So, with the last two boys in my story, I didn't mention that I was sort of with them both at the same time. I don't know how they put up with it, how I let it go on, and how the universe didn't kick me off the face of the earth for it, but that's what happened. The first boy, the first love and the second boy, the bad boy were both waiting for me to choose, waiting for me to want them back, and I finally did. Part of the reason for breaking up with boy number two, was that I wanted to be with boy number one. He lived in a different state at the time and that was part of our problem before, but I didn't care. I called him and told him I was in love with him and wanted him back. It was the perfect couple of months and all of the planning came back. The yellow roses bloomed again, the guitars were tuning up, and then he told me that he had been with someone for months and that he didn't love me and never loved me. This was the first time in my life that was absolutely crushed. To make it worse, he moved down the street from me and I saw him everywhere. This song was on a popular album that year. It was how I felt about this boy at the time. For months I had tried to break down his walls, to love him, and he just couldn't let me.

The Curse of Curves by Cute Is What We Aim For

This song is another song that was inspired by the person in the last song. When we broke up, he told me to look up this song. I had been the biggest jerk to him and he didn't deserve it in the slightest. He put up with so much crap in our relationship, my friends, my ex, who kept coming in and out of the picture, a probably more. The night we broke up, I "celebrated" with my friends, to finally being free of him. It's funny thinking about this because if I met 16 year old me, I would have decked her, that is not who I am at all. I guess I knew that back then too because I came home and felt so incredibly low for what I had done. When I was about to fall asleep, I got a text on my phone from this boy telling me to listen to this song. I looked it up right away and sunk even deeper in my self dug hole. The words scratched against my hard exterior that I had created and then the pain came.

"It's so hard when you're shallow as a shower"

I decided that night that I was going to change because I knew that person wasn't me.  This song was a humbling song that needed to be heard so a change could happen.

Your Life and Mine by Just Surrender

So, after the first love came the bad boy. Every teen needs one right? Well, of course, I saw more that in him but that's beside the point. After the blue house was torn down, I moved on to a boy that I met on the bus on the way home from the state football game. We talked and instantly connected and ended up holding hands on the way home. There was something so mysterious about this boy and I loved being with him and being in his world. The problem that should've been a red flag at the beginning was that my friends absolutely hated him and his friends absolutely hated me...I never knew why. So as much as I loved to be with him, my friends would corner me and I somehow convinced myself that I didn't want to be with him. I eventually was a jerk and broke up with him in the worst way you can break up with someone, mostly because my friends were there and I was a teenage girl.  But before all of that, when we were just trying to be together, he told me to listen to this song. It perfectly described how we were both feeling at the time. Both of our groups of friends didn't want us together, but we wanted to be. For a little while, I really had fun with him and really cared about him. I always felt horrible about breaking up with him and how I broke up with him. That's when I decided to never let my friends influence my relationships going forward.

In My Dreams by Josh Turner

This song represents a very innocent, sweet time in my life. I was sixteen when I fell in love for the first time. The world was full of yellow roses, beautiful lakes, and songs on the guitar in 2007. I met my first love that summer at a summer camp sort of thing. He was way into someone else, and I had just broken up with my first boyfriend because there was nothing there.  The whole camp my ex boyfriend was trying to get back together with me, I was trying to get with the new guy, and he was trying to get with someone else. A few weeks later, we all went to the lake and spent the day in the sun. I remember feeling like we were on an island and no one could touch us or ruin it. I eventually bewitched this boy and we started dating. Our first kiss was during a meteor shower and was about the cheesiest thing you could possibly imagine, but it was perfect. Spoiler Alert: It all went to crap eventually, but before it did, we made all sorts of plans, that back then seemed to be indestructible. We planned to date all through high school, get married, and raise our kids in a big blue house on the same kind of island we were on that day at the lake. But the world slowly crept in and the big blue house was torn apart. Still, it's nice to remember the most innocent time of my life when I fell hard, fast, and completely.