Last week I promised you the story of me and this
ex-boyfriend. So here it is.
I decided
to go to a nearby university for school because my mom was getting sicker and I
wanted to be with her as much as I could. She died during my sophomore year,
and it was really hard on me, as I’ve mentioned before. I had Ruth, but she has
her own kids as well as the rest of my family to think about. And other than
her, I felt alone. Dad pulled away even more after Mom’s death, Eliza wasn’t
motivated to bond with anyone, Marie escaped all the memories by going to a
school far away, and I found it difficult to relate to or connect with anyone
new.
By the end
of my junior year, a year after Mom’s death, I had worked through things enough
that I was making connections again and socializing. I didn’t have BFFs, but it
was more than I’d been able to do since Mom took a turn for the worse.
There was a guy at the dorms, a
senior getting ready to graduate, and one day when I was passing by his room,
there was the mountain of boxes. I asked if I could help, since the guy
moving had always been nice to me. And that’s when I saw him for the first time.
Fred, the guy’s brother. He smiled and said he’d never turn down help from a
pretty girl. It was the first time a guy had ever called me pretty.
I helped them move boxes
into their van, and after we finished, Fred asked for my number. He called me
the next day, and we went on our first date that Friday. We had an immediate
connection, something I’d never experienced before and haven’t since. We didn’t
talk about the small stuff, we talked about the important things. Our pasts,
our hopes, our dreams. Fred was the first person I talked to about my mom, and
he shared his past with me as well. Although his older brother and sister had
gone the academic route, he’d joined the Navy right after 9/11 and had been in
the military for three years. He’d been to Iraq twice before, and the last time
he’d lost his closest friend in his unit. In that way, we both understood loss
and how no one would really understand.
But besides our tragedies, we both
had huge dreams. I wanted to go to law school at the same university my mom got
her bachelor’s, and become a lawyer to advocate for abused children. Fred was
fascinated with the internet, which although it was common at that time, it
hadn’t reached its full peak of potential, like it's at now. Although he’d only
had a few community college classes, he thought he could create a successful
service through the internet. He didn’t know what he would do then, only that
with something that could connect the whole world together, there had to be
something he could create. I was amazed at him, taking this fairly new route,
and I saw how brilliant he was. I knew he’d get there someday.
After all that time of being alone,
I wasn’t anymore. And more than that, I loved someone who loved me just as
deeply in return.
After we’d been seeing each other
for about a year, Fred was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq in a month and I
was accepted to my dream law school. A very, very expensive school, might I
add.
Then Fred proposed to me. I
accepted without hesitation. But he didn’t want to wait six months until he got
back from the Middle East to get married. You have to understand, his parents
married at 19 after knowing each other for six months. They’ve been through a
lot, but still love each other madly. To Fred, distance and money and those
things didn’t matter as long as you loved each other. And he carried me away
with this vision. He told me that he wanted to marry me and he didn’t want to
wait. If we knew we loved each other, then why did it matter that we got
married sooner rather than later? He
never said it exactly, but I think his buddy’s death really got to him, in that
he thought he might die while he was over there, and he just wanted to be
married to me. Even if it was only for two weeks.
Ruth had met Fred before and
thought him a fling to get out of my system, but the rest of my family hadn’t
bothered to meet him because they, too, thought this relationship wasn’t
important. So when I brought Fred to meet Dad, Eliza, and Ruth, Dad hated Fred
from the moment he saw him. You see, Fred is Latino, and Dad has some very
racist opinions. When I announced our engagement Dad said that the only place a
person like Fred had in his daughter’s life was picking the food she ate. He
also claimed that if we got married, he wouldn’t pay for my law school and he
would take away the trust fund he’d set up for me to get access to when I was
25.
That was the first and only time I
stood up to my father. I professed my love for Fred and my determination to
marry him in two weeks, no matter what my family did. I said I’d rather have
Fred than any of them.
I meant it, too. Every word I said
about Fred being the most important person in my life and marrying him, I planned on keeping. But the next day Ruth
came to see me, which was strange because she never came to my apartment. She
told me that my father’s racist comments were wrong and uncalled for, but she thought
it was unwise of me to settle down so soon.
She pointed out I was only 22, with
my whole life ahead of me. Did I know I wanted to be married now? I said yes,
but she continued. She said that without my father’s money, I’d have to take
out loans, which would be at least a hundred thousand dollars of debt by the
time I graduated, plus the interest, and in my field, I wouldn’t be making a
lot of money compared to other attorneys. I didn’t mind working off the loan,
but I’d told Ruth before about Fred’s ambitions of creating an internet
business. She reminded me that starting a business took money. And we would
need a loan, which would be difficult to get when I had mounds of student loans
to pay and our financials were tied together. If we got married then, one of us
would have to sacrifice our dream.
I thought it through, and I knew I
couldn’t give up my dream. But I also couldn’t ask Fred to sacrifice his for
mine. I tried to think of another way we could make it work, of how we could be
married and achieve our dreams, but looking at everything, I knew there was a
very slim chance we could have everything in one bite and not choke.
But I loved him so much, I couldn’t
imagine breaking off the engagement. The worst part about this whole thing is
that I tried so hard to find another solution, it wasn’t until we were in the
courthouse, about to go in to the judge, that I finally told Fred we couldn’t
get married, not now. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I told him I
wasn’t going to marry him. Shock and disbelief and pain. So, so much pain, like I was actually torturing him to death.
He asked why, if it was anything he
had done, and I told him about what Ruth had brought up. But he didn’t
understand. As someone who grew up always scrounging for money, working since
he was fourteen to help support his family, and watching his brother and sister
take out loans, he wasn’t scared of all the challenges we had to face,
especially since his parents had faced incredible difficulties. He said as long
as we were together, nothing else would matter. But me, the rich, spoiled girl
I was, couldn’t imagine a life like that. I couldn’t imagine the debt and the
difficulties.
Then Fred offered his hand to me,
asking me if I would go with him or if I’d be persuaded by my godmother. I
stayed frozen in front of the reception desk, unable to think of the words to
say, how to say how sorry I was, how much I loved him, how I wished it could be
different. But it all came out as, “I can’t.”
His outstretched hand became a
fist, and he walked out. That was the last time I saw him.
Fred went to Iraq and I went to law
school. I was sucked into a legal issue at my father’s company and ended up
working for him rather than following my dream of working with abused children.
Fred left the service after completing his tour, started up his business, and
became incredibly successful. And now he’s coming, and he’s going to realize
how lucky he was to get away when he did, since I have no spine of my own,
working for a corporation, and not just any corporation, but for my father, the
racist.
So now you
know it all, and just how bad this will probably turn out.
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