Diary of a dying man

The First Betrayal

It's funny how love can mark you more than pain and sorrow... it's as if that feeling that we have been taught is the basis of human nature, was just as Joaquín Sabina describes it "Love is the game in which two blind men play to hurt each other" and yes... it really is like that. I started to draw some drawings made in paint and printed when I was 10 years old, which to be frank, were artistically and visually a mess... however, at that time, for me, they were my best way of expressing what I felt for Gabriela.

Surely you will think "Hey, but you were 10 years old and you liked a girl from your school" Yes, indeed, but then I did not understand the attraction that Estefania exerted on me as love. What's more, I would say that it had even diminished in a brutal way. I don't know exactly what it was about Gabriela that caught my attention. Physically she wasn't pretty, not that she was ugly by the standards of a 10 year old boy who was being bullied... but she was very mysterious to me at the time. We were not friends, just classmates and we didn't talk much to each other, however, since those years, I was very good at writing poetry (of course, I was not a Neruda, Benedetti or Baudelaire) but for what I was entitled to as a 10 year old boy, educated in the decadent Peruvian school system... I wasn't bad at all.

I remember that she used to sit one desk away from me, being a naughty child, she attracted a lot of attention and not exactly in the best way. So in a few conversations over folded papers (yes, that's how we communicated at that time) we struck up a poorly forged friendship. Half a year passed and there was nothing to indicate that anything could happen or that we could even become more than friends, but of course, this time I had to take the initiative, so I passed him a note (which I kept in the box and hold in my hand right now) that said "I like you, do you want to be with me? "...just that fresh and stupid...no romance, no novel ideals, nothing...I was very surprised by his response, when he handed the paper back to me, with a marked "Yes" behind my note in response. At that moment I felt in glory... I was going to be the first of my classmates to have a crush, that thing that the older boys boasted about, I, the despised and bullied one, was going to be the first one.

I should have noticed then the patterns I see now as an adult... but at that time, I wanted to do everything I had seen in series and movies to make Gabriela happy... so I took advantage of an oversight and took a ring that my mother never wore to give it to her... until then, we had only stayed alone 3 times after class to kiss each other to our hearts' content, locked in the classroom and the school storage room... then of course, my mother realized that her ring was missing and with a simple interrogation, she made me confess, which caused Gabriela to return the ring that "her lover" had given her.

It came to my attention once, when I was called to the school psychologist's office and soon after Gabriela was called. The psychologist, knew about us and asked us how we were going to see each other on vacation. At that time we made up an excuse and said (at least I sincerely did) that we would visit each other during the summer and go out together. I must have noticed then what he wanted to tell me with his eyes, because shortly after he brought in Pedro, the boy who since first grade had made my life a living hell. Today, thinking about it, I remember that Gabriela got nervous and couldn't hold Pedro's gaze, but at that time my anger towards him was so great that I overlooked it and didn't pay any attention to it.

Within two weeks, the relationship was over and I was once again the mockery of the entire class..... but not for the reasons I thought I was. One day, when we had sports class, we went to a nearby stadium to play soccer and since I never liked this sport, I hid in a dressing room to take a nap and forget about the world... but it so happened that in that dressing room, Gabriela and Pedro were kissing and touching each other beyond my childish comprehension... Yes... I had become a cuckold... and I don't doubt that this was long before the relationship with me began... but at that moment I hated Pedro more than I had ever hated him before. My manly pride had been shattered as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer.

I silently left that dressing room and acted indifferent all the way back home... until in the privacy of my room, in the middle of the night, I let the tears I had been holding back flow... I cried because of the rage I felt... I cried because as incredible as it may seem I had fallen in love and I was tasting the unpleasant taste of heartbreak... I cried because life was terribly unfair and did not give me a moment of happiness

It took 9 years after that moment for me to finally get up the courage to look for Gabriela again, it wasn't important anymore, but I wanted to know if she still remembered me. I was not interested in resuming a relationship with her, far from it, but I needed answers.... I managed to locate her and went to her house. When I rang the doorbell, she came out and didn't recognize me, I explained who I was and I couldn't tell her "we were in love when we were 10 years old"... I just told her "we were schoolmates in 5th grade" and invented a whole absurd plot about a possible school reunion, but her "ah"... ended up convincing me that I had nothing to do in that place. I said goodbye as politely as I could, without asking her anything else or even touching the reason that had led me to look for her, I got on my bike and went back home... To this day 14 years after that "reunion" I have never heard from her again, except for the drawings I kept in my box... I looked at them again for a moment and read carefully her name in the middle "Gaby"... After looking at the 3 or 4 drawings I left in the box, I took them out and tore them up, leaving the pieces in the pile that will go in the trash before I checked what else I had kept in my box