This is a song about someone who has confused addiction with transcendence. The narrator is pleading to be released from someone they simultaneously believe they cannot survive without. That 'rather die' refrain isn't romantic devotion. It's the panic of someone who knows peace of mind and this person are supposed to be different things, but cannot separate them anymore.
The first time I saw you / Was the last time I fell in love
This sounds like a romantic declaration until you realize what it actually says. The narrator is admitting they will never experience that feeling again, not because this love is so perfect, but because they are locked in. First and last means there is no way forward.
It's something I don't think about lately
The narrator says this immediately after describing paralysis and preferring death to loss. The thing they 'don't think about' is consuming the entire song. This is someone lying to themselves mid-sentence, trying to convince themselves they have moved on while unable to stop talking about it.
Tried to call it love / But we had no idea the damage we had done
Past tense. They tried to call it love, which means they know now it was something else. The damage is mutual, which complicates the 'claws off me' framing. The narrator might be asking to be released from something they helped create.
So we just cry and call it off / 'Cause we've been hiding from ourselves for way too long
This is the only time the song acknowledges that both people are doing this to each other. The hiding is not from the relationship but from themselves while inside it. The ending offers no resolution, just mutual exhaustion and the decision to stop.
The song ends with mutual crying and calling it off, but does not say anyone actually left. That might be the most honest part. The narrator has spent the entire song asking to be freed while insisting they would rather die, which means they are asking for something they will fight against the moment it is granted.
"first time" by Jigitz depicts someone trapped between two impossible needs, demanding freedom while fearing it will destroy them. In Scalpel's line-by-line reading, what makes the song devastating is not the contradiction itself but the narrator's calm acceptance of being permanently stuck, delivered with a resignation that suggests they have already surrendered to this bind.
"first time" by Jigitz explores the peace you can't accept, claws not hands, paralysis as love language, and damage without details. The central thread is the peace you can't accept: The narrator repeats 'find my peace of mind' like a mantra while rejecting the one action that would give them peace, which is letting go of this person. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "first time" by Jigitz lands here: The narrator would be surprised to learn that finding peace and losing this person are the exact same thing. The song is structured like a loop because that's the emotional reality: demanding release, refusing it, starting over.