Drive Me In Your Crown Victoria

(Originally published: 22/11/16)

What happens when you love someone too much and then everything crumbles down to ashes?

I fell in love with a boy. A boy whom I thought would love me forever. A boy who changed his mind.

Last September, I was feeling ready to meet someone and start a serious relationship, but even though I wanted that, I wasn’t really looking. I felt ready, I was in a good moment of my life and was ready to build and share my time with someone.

By mid-September I met a guy. A tall, handsome, 21-year-old pre-med student who asked me out on a date. We talked for a week before actually going on that date and you could tell chemistry was there, so I was really excited when date night arrived.  We went to have some sushi, he was wearing tailored pants and a red shirt, which made him look even more attractive with his long-slicked back hair.  You could tell he was one of those introvert intellectuals by the way he was speaking and the way he would show his emotions, but I thought he was adorable. We spent dinner talking about our goals, movies, art, and it felt amazing, it was fluid, it was not pretentious, it felt right and natural and exciting.

After sushi, and an incredible conversation, we crashed into his lab late at the night, where showed me the entire pre-med building, and there, surrounded by lab equipment supplies, listening to him talking about his projects with cells and how he would have to inject them with protein every day in order to keep them alive, I looked at him and thought: “This guy could really be ‘the one”.

We walked all around the UTRGV campus and then, after being seated in front of a fountain playing with our fingertips, we started walking and, unexpectedly, he grabbed my hand and never let me go. I was walking over clouds.

We went to the movies because I really wanted to watch Bridget Jones’ Baby. We had a blast of fun that night, and by the end of it, we kissed. We kissed, and it was one of those kisses where you don’t expect them to kiss that good, but they do, and suddenly you melt in a way you never did before. It was perfect.

Next day, I saw him again. He asked me out for brunch, and 10 minutes later he was outside waiting for me in his car. Waiting for me in his Crown Victoria.

This guy – we will call him “Ernesto”- and I, were, at that moment, amazed by each other, and like I said, he was a Pre-Med student (a senior one) and he was about to find out which med school he had gotten in, so he was planning on going to Austin in a few days to celebrate. I was very excited for him, I was very excited for meeting a guy who was my age and also had a very mature and goal-oriented mindset,  and then again, unexpectedly, he said “I want you to go to Austin with me” And I, of course, being as wild and free as I’m used to be, said yes.

Ernesto spent the week speaking with his friends so we could both stay at one of their apartments for the weekend, he seemed very excited to take me with him, and I was too. I have to say I was actually trying to keep things a secret from many of my friends, because I was so happy that I was scared. Do you ever feel like whenever you are incredibly happy and filled with joy, as soon as people know about your happiness, everything just fades away? Real or not, I wanted for things to work with Ernesto, so I just told my friend Alexis, my mom, and my sister what was going on. And just like that, without telling anyone else, a week later I was holding Ernesto’s hand while he was driving us to Austin.

He got into Southwestern Medical School, so that meant that he was going to leave to Dallas by fall 2017, or maybe a little sooner, and that would also mean a problem for developing a relationship, but we didn’t care. Whatever it was, we had a year ahead of us, we were together in Austin and we stayed with his friend Crista, whom I have to say was by far adorable.

I remember our kisses, how we held hands walking down the street, how I would hold him while he was driving, how he would take my hand and kiss it. I remember how we went to swim to that lake and how we were sitting at the top of Covert Park at 3am holding tight to each other, kissing and enjoying the view. I remember walking at the Domain and spotting a beautiful rainbow right before us.

He said to me: “I love you” before going to sleep on our first night in Austin. It felt so good. And mostly, I remember how, during our last and final day there, we went to the Texas Capitol and, after walking through its halls, we took a sit on the façade steps and there, we started talking about us, about what we wanted, about how we both wanted a serious relationship.

We both knew that he was going to move to Dallas a year before my university graduation, we both knew that there was going to be a moment in time when things would complicate, but that did not matter, I said to him “I don’t care if we have a year, I want to be with you” and then, in the most sincere and natural way, he asked me to be his boyfriend.

I was so happy. I was really paralyzed with happiness.

We returned to the valley after that amazing weekend, and I was totally crazy for him, I really was.

But was this going way too fast? When I told Claudio what happened in Austin, he was afraid that things were going a little bit too fast. I said to him that yes, indeed things happened too fast, but we spent entire days together and everything just felt natural and real and romantic. He was happy for me, but he also adviced me to be careful… and I should’ve listened to him.

The first month of our relationship went too well, we had fun, we had chemistry. We are two very different people in many ways, but so similar in many others. We complemented each other, there was a balance.

People would usually tell me how much good that relationship would do to me, since Ernesto was actually the first guy that I ever dated who was my age. I was used to dating, or being in relationships with men who were at least eight years older than me, men who were already completely out to their families, with their own places and with a concrete knowledge of the things that they wanted. With Ernesto was different, he wasn’t completely out to his parents, and I even had to hide in the closet one time when they got home earlier than expected. Things that I found funny and that I didn’t care about, because I loved him.

I felt it, it was real, I loved him. I would feel “butterflies” in my stomach just by thinking of him. I hadn’t felt “butterflies” for anyone in a long time. I had only said I love you to another man before, because I wanted to save that for someone I could see a future with, so he became the second.

One night I told him. I said “you scare me”, he asked me why and I said “You scare me, because I love you”. It was so hard saying "I love you". I wanted so badly to tell him, but I was also nervous because that is a very powerful thing to say to someone.

He smiled like never before, breathed in, and pulled me towards him kissing me passionately, and then he said “I love you too”.

On a different occasion, we went to the beach in the middle of the night, and we stayed there looking up to the stars, talking and just loving each other. It felt great, the ocean looked so powerful, we were surrounded by darkness and a sky filled with millions of stars upon us. It was as if we were out of this world. It felt like we belonged.

That night we were talking about things way ahead of us: about me moving to Dallas to be with him, a house, traveling together around the world, and children’s names. It was one of those conversations in life that you never forget.

But the thing is, Ernesto was never used to show emotions, he said that I was the person he had showed more emotions and feelings to, but sometimes he would paralyze.

There were moments when he didn’t even seem excited to be with me, he was all serious and cold and dry. He seemed absorbed.  He said “This is the way I am, I'm sorry, I don’t speak that much sometimes” and I understood, I was dating an introverted guy so, that was normal, right?

But that lack of emotion can put anyone in doubt. I would constantly find myself thinking: did I say something wrong? Is he okay? Is he happy? Is he having trouble at school? Whenever I'd ask, he'd say he was "just chilling" and I, again, understood him.

He was not like that all the time, of course he was sweet and we would talk about many things, but there were those moments, those weird moments where it seemed as if he wasn’t happy to be with me, or at least that’s how it looked like. He once said he was “paralyzed” because we were at a very good place and did not want to ruin things. He once said that the future scared him. He had too much going on with school, laboratory, an upcoming conference, exams and applying to scholarships for Med School, so I tried to understand him, I was his boyfriend and I was there to help him and support him in every way, if he was being silent it was because he was comfortable with me and also thinking about the future. Nothing to worry about.

But an overdose of silence and lack of emotion isn’t always good.

I tried not to pay attention to that, and instead I focused my mind in the good and lovely things about our relationship.. But things changed when we talked about our past. He said he had been seeing a guy in the past, let’s call him Raul, and that things didn’t work out between them, so they never became boyfriends, they just stayed as “friends with benefits”. One night, and, I don’t know if he did it because of that, but… one night, he took pictures of me in the car and I was laughing because I looked terrible, and after a few minutes I took his phone because I wanted to see my pictures. As soon as I unlocked his phone he took it off my hand, searched my pic and showed it to me before putting his phone back to where it was. Sure, maybe it was too bold of me to just grab his phone to look at my pics, but the way he did it just made it seemed as if he was hiding something.

The night after that, we were looking at his photos of when he was in Rome, and there, in his gallery, as he tried to carefully scroll, I found myself looking at photos of a naked Raul. I was quick to question him: “Why do you still have photos of a guy you tried to have a relationship with? Why do you have photos of the guy who was your friend with benefits?” "Why are these photos recent?" He said that they were friends and that he didn’t have feelings for him, that it was his past and never really worried about deleting the pictures, and I expressed how uncomfortable I would feel if I ever knew that they were seeing each other. He said not to worry, but now I was worried, now I was jealous.

It was because of small things like that that I started to worry about our relationship, plus the fact that he would sometimes stay silent for long periods of time. I felt like I was the only one doing everything and putting all of my emotions and effort for making things work, and for understanding him.

During the final weeks I would feel as if I was speaking to a wall, I would say something funny or tell him about my day on the phone and he would stay in silence, sometimes, for over a minute. I would ask, “Ernesto, are you there?” and he would just say “Mhhm”.

The worst part of it all, was when he started to minimize my projects, my job, or my dreams. One time, when I showed him the writing that I had done for an open mic session on mental health, he criticized it for not being dramatic enough. He said "I'd want to bring people to tears with my writing, this is too light" and I remember saying "Well, what I want at a mental health meet up is to inspire people not to make them cry?!" But he would criticise my writing, and then he would jump to tell me how my English wasn't good enough. He made me feel inferior by highlighting how I only held a Mexican passport, so probably our idea of moving together to Dallas would not happen. He would say "I mean, where do you think you're even moving to anyway? You live in Reynosa" He lived in McAllen, the American side of the border, so of course, that was "better". He even went as far as to criticise my work on regional television. One time when I jumped into his car after a day of shooting, he was harsh with his comments regarding how "perfect" I looked and the fact that he could tell that I was wearing make up. "I want a boyfriend, not a mannequin" he said. And that really hurt me.

I have to say, it was because of those things that I was becoming a person that I didn’t like at all. I was constantly nervous, I was scared of losing him, I would constantly ask him if everything was okay, which annoyed him, and to be honest, it annoyed me too. It looked as if I was a psycho boyfriend who wanted attention. He had to study and do school work, so sometimes he would not speak to me in over 8 or even 12 hours during our last days together. And I didn’t care about that, I didn’t care if he didn’t speak to me all day, but when we did talk late at night there was no quality of a conversation, he was dry and cold and with nothing to say, and that did worry me, that I did not like.

I told Claudio about that, and he said: “Maybe he just doesn’t like you enough” “Maybe that’s why he is so effort and emotionless” “You’re not imagining stuff, it seems to me like he doesn’t know what he wants”.

In our final weekend together, I told him about how one of my current best friends, Guillaume, used to be, not my boyfriend, but something close to it four years before. He smirked and asked: “So, why don’t you want me to see Raul or text him if you do see and speak with Guillaume? I tried to defend myself, because the two relationships had nothing in common. Guillaume and I had been intimate four years prior, and after that we became strictly friends, and would hang out with people from our circle to parties, dinners, etc, whereas his relationship with Raul had started because of sex, continued because of sex, and there had been no interactions other than meeting to make out. But it was pointless, in his head, he now had a card to play against me, almost like an excuse to cheat.

“Well then now I’m going to talk to him” he announced.

I said: “Oh, so now you’re going to text him”

“Well, yes I am.” he replied, with some sort of a smile on his face.

“Well yes, I am" in a tone that sounded as if he had been waiting so long to text his ex- friend with benefits.

I got so angry at him, but then he tried to fix his sentence by saying: ”I’m not saying that I will text him, I’m just saying that now I don’t have to feel bad for when he calls me and I'm not able to pick up the phone. Now I can answer him”

It was a few weeks before that day that I lost the butterflies, I felt scared when I thought of him and didn’t feel those butterflies and, after that fight, I knew that things were heading off the road.

I was feeling crazy, I didn’t know if I was in my right to feel jealous or worried. I knew that those things were not right, but then when he defended himself, he would do it so graciously that made me even question myself. Am I exaggerating? Am I really being a bad boyfriend?

Our final week went by slowly. I was nervous and sad, I knew things were heading to an end, but I had hope. I had hope that all of the good things of our relationship would weight more than the stupid bad ones. You fight for love, you don’t give up, and that sounds really beautiful, but only if it isn't one-sided.

I saw him for the very last time on a Saturday. He had told me on the phone that he had doubts about the relationship and that we needed to talk. So, we went to eat to a park… the same park we went to the morning after saying “I love you". Ironic.

He said to me that he was unable to encompass everything, school, exams, moving to Dallas and me, that our relationship had a lot of obstacles in the future, so he didn’t see the point of it. I was so angry looking at him giving up that easily. He mentioned that moving to Dallas would be difficult, and I said, “Well, I thought we had already talked about all of that before becoming boyfriends, before you decided to ask me to be your boyfriend. I thought we had a plan” I (stupidly) tried to tell him how we could face all obstacles, but he said he didn’t think he had the will to do so. I was shocked.

Then, with some sort of irreverence in his tone, he said how he didn’t feel jealous about me still being friends with Guillaume, and I said “Great, because there’s nothing to be jealous about”, but then he made a short pause, before chuckling as he tried to find his words. He finally added: “I actually wouldn’t feel jealous if I knew that you are sleeping with him”

WHAT?! I wanted to scream in that moment. What did he just say? I asked him why, and then he looked at me, directly into my eyes, and said: "Because I don’t care"

My heart was breaking. I asked him what was going on…what was he talking about?

"You said you loved me" I said about to burst in tears. "I appreciate you" he corrected. "Why did you say that you loved me then?" I asked trying not cry in front of him, and he finally said "I love you, but not like that".

I didn't understand.

I couldn't keep it any longer, so I started crying, and he looked so okay with everything. He said that his career was important, that he had to be the best of the best, that he had a life, until I finally exploded and said, “Well, guess what? You’re not the only one with a life, Ernesto, I have a career too, I want to be the best too, I work hard too, you are not the only one.

He never really said it, but it is obvious that the main reason of our break up was that, like Claudio said to me, “he just didn’t like me that much”, and that is why he just didn’t feel the will to fight for us. He found me irritatingly "basic", too fem with my mannequin make up, as he called it, too little for him with my Mexican passport when he was about to be a great doctor in Dallas.

But, how can someone say “I love you”, make plans with you, kiss you and hold you when you sleep together, talk about children’s names and then suddenly say that they don’t really love you in that way, and that they just don’t want to fight for you? How can they? What kind of people is that? How? Can anyone please explain to me? How?

After that, he drove me back. I walked out of his car trying to be strong, trying to keep it together, just to end up crying in the street, alone and heartbroken, feeling stupid and clueless.

I think he’s a quitter. Because as soon as things became weird, he preferred to step aside rather than working together. Rather than working for the things he said he wanted with me.

I know that all of this time, I tried to understand him in every way. And it is until I write this, that I see how many times I mentioned his things, HIS future, his school, his time. And what about me? What about ourselves, people? How can we try to understand someone that much but not being able to even care about ourselves. I have a career too, I work hard too, my education and my goals and my career are just as important as his. I focused on understanding him all the way. Who understood me?

I’m not saying that I am perfect, I know that I made mistakes too, but I think I just loved him “too” much. I also think that maybe we found ourselves in the wrong time, maybe if things were different, if things were easier, we could be together, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure if things would be different. People don’t just stop loving like that.

All I know now, is that I want to be with someone who truly wants to be with me too, with someone who fights for me, with someone who says “I love you” and means it. With someone who doesn’t think his career or his projects are more important than my own. A man who knows what he wants.

I write this as a therapy, and because I know I gave too much. I feel empty and I feel sick to my bones right now. And also, because I know I’m not the only one going through this kind of situation.

Maybe this is my way for learning not to go so fast… that it doesn’t matter how amazingly nice things are going, I have to go slow… that  if someone tells you “Trust me when I say I love you” he might be lying to you.

If there’s someone out there feeling heartbroken, I hope that my story with Ernesto works as a medicine for you. Because you need to know that it is okay to love “too much” and to give yourself to someone, for that makes you a great human being… but you must also be careful and prepared, because even who you least expect it, even the most introverted and nerdy guy out there… even he can break your heart.

I’ll keep our good memories forever in my heart, because I really, truly loved him. I’ll remember our moments, our kisses and Austin, I’ll remember his laughter and our jokes… I’ll remember how it felt to sit next to him in his Crown Victoria… even if he drove us off the road.