Ode to Love & Dance

Downfall

I was in love. I was obsess. A day without holding her hand, without hugging her was painful. I longed for that hour where I would see her before she would go to class, where we would meet again and I could hold her for a couple of seconds before seeing her off.

I wanted to share my happiness with my parents. I thought they would be happy. I was crushed that I didn't get that reaction. I could almost see the tears in my mom's eyes when I told her. "No, I don't want to meet her. What would we talk about? You know I'm not good with English," she said.

In the end, I left the conversation and went outside.

I thought that the relationship would last. But we knew before we even got serious, that she was planning on transferring to another school at the end of the year.

I remembered that moment, like I'm still in the room living it. For a few minutes, I was determined that I was going to make a long distance relationship last. I was in the CS computer lab. I was sitting in the corner of the room with my laptop open near the entrance door. I called her and I told her that I didn't want it to be over at the end of the year. I was wanted to come up with a plan and I asked her where her new school was going to be so I could find out exactly how far it was away. I looked it up on Google maps, and I knew then and there that it wasn't going to work out. My heart sunk. She knew. And I could tell her heart sank too by the tone of her voice.

It was maybe a week or two after that when she broke up with me. She did it during a night when I took the liberty of going to her apartment with medicine, after she told me she was starting to feel sick a few hours before. I didn't believe the words she said when she told me. There was a moment of silence. I knew I was still crazy for her. I didn't want it to end. But, a side of me thought it was for the best. It wasn't going to be a happy ending. She knew it. I knew it. She didn't want to get deeper in the relationship than we already were. A part of me agreed, and I figured it was pointless to fight for the relationship.   

When we broke up, I spent long moments holding my own hands and pressing my lips against the cap of my water bottle. I found that it made it easier for me to be apart from her. It shattered me when a passing hug became a passing wave, to eventually nothing at all. It took about a month to get over it. We tried to be friends for awhile, but I only got frustrated. I wanted it to be more physical. 

The weekend that she broke up with me was the weekend that my dad found out that I was dating a white girl. Instead of the tears, he just lectured me, yelled at me, "Don't date a white girl. She'll leave you. She won't take care of you and you'll have to do everything for yourself," he said.

I never told him or my mom that we broke up. I wanted their insecurity to worry them and eat them alive. So that maybe, just maybe that they could almost feel as bad as felt. There was no fiber of my being that I wanted to give them the satisfactions and joy that I was no longer in a relationship with her when I was at the worst point in my life. I let them believe that we were still together for the rest of the year. Even then, I told them indirectly. A friend of theirs asked me if I had a girlfriend. "No. I am single," I told him. Then glanced at my parents for a second and walked away. 

I still haven't forgiven them.