Love is blindness, I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me
Oh, my heart
Love is blindness…
—U2, "Love is Blindness"
Bono had a point when he wrote that song back around 1990. Love, or being in love, blinds you to (some of) the realities of your relationship with that person, and yet not seeing those realities is exactly what you want. You just want to stay blissfully ignorant, awash in all of the positive sensations. And for the last year Roxanne and I were together, I think that's pretty much how I was: blind and enjoying it. Because in hindsight, I see now there were a couple of moments well before the breakup when I should have realized that the last words of our story were not going to be "…and they lived happily ever after."
(Side note: check out both the original version of that song, from their 1991 masterpiece Achtung Baby, and Jack White's cover from the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.)
(Side note: check out both the original version of that song, from their 1991 masterpiece Achtung Baby, and Jack White's cover from the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.)
Anyways. I mentioned in part 1 that had I been accepted to the film school at UCLA, I would have proposed to her on our anniversary trip. I was deadly serious about that. I would have asked my grandma Jasmin for the ring that my late step-grandfather gave her, I would have asked Rox's dad for his blessing, and I would have found a quiet moment that weekend in August to ask the girl I was madly in love with to spend the rest of her life with me. But obviously I wasn't picked—wasn't even called down for an interview—and I was cool with that. Still am. I don't think I'd have had half as much fun at U Can't Learn Anything as I have here at CSUN. Plus I realized popping the question at that point would have been ridiculously impulsive, even for me, and that I'd be in a better position to provide for a hypothetical future coupling/family once I'd finished my undergrad and landed a job in the industry.
I told her all this when she took me to dinner at Fleur De Lis in SF, the last Friday night before I left for Northridge. "Aww, baby that's so sweet of you," I remember her telling me. "But I just wouldn't be ready to say yes right now." And then she laid out a bunch of conditions: she didn't want to be engaged for more than a year, she didn't want to get married until she was done with medical school (which meant 2017 at the earliest), it had to be in a Catholic church, et cetera. It stung me, obviously, but it was quickly forgotten over a bigger blow that weekend: a family friend of 30+ years, the closest thing my mom had to a sister, had lost her second battle with cancer.
But I was still committed to a future with Rox, and I made my way down to the San Fernando Valley—America's Suburb™!—with her parting words on my mind and a Norah Jones cover of Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" playing on my car stereo. We kept up the same routine we had developed when we were both in the Bay of me texting her good morning and her texting me good night, we committed to weekly phone or video chats, and she even came down to see me on Labor Day weekend. (Well, she was there for an emergency family conclave and I just happened to be in the same town as her relatives, but she still took the opportunity to bring me a batch of baked macaroni and cheese from the same recipe I introduced her to. I think I still have the post-it note she stuck on top somewhere, complete with a faded marker-ink heart.) That entire first year, actually, we were easily able to see each other in person once a month; my workload wasn't heavy enough to force me to stay down south the whole time, and I could easily move study and work sessions around if one of us wanted to come to the other.
And she did come down alone to visit on Veterans' Day weekend that first year. Brought stuff for homemade sushi on the flight down, had brunch with my closest friends at CSUN and with my family in Orange County, walked through the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, gave her a tour of campus, it was lovely. I remember saying I was happy about not going home again until Thanksgiving because the best of the Bay was coming to me. Taking her to LAX for her flight home, however, was a little bumpy. Not just because it sucked having to say goodbye, but also because she looked at me sideways when I talked about building a future with her. It kept me vexed all the way back up 405, although not as vexed as not seeing her in person for another 6 weeks. But again I brushed it off. She still loves me, I thought. She still wants us to be together in the end.
December 2012 should have been the loudest alarm for two reasons.
First, on the weekend before I drove home for winter break, we had a 3-hour phone conversation that went into the wee hours of Monday morning and at one point she cryptically talked about "taking a break from us." I didn't think much of it. Chalked it up to stress from her work at the VA and from a couple of early medical school rejections—she'd submitted applications to 24 universities just before Thanksgiving.
Then on the morning after I came home, I got all of my final semester grades in: A, A-, B+ and B, good for a 3.5 GPA and a spot on the Dean's List. Rox was the first person I messaged with the good news, and I wasn't surprised when she didn't respond right away. It was on her busiest day of the week, so it would have taken her a while to get back anyways, and I've always tried to be patient. But then noon, 12:30, 1 o'clock rolled around and still no word, and to kill some boredom I hopped on Facebook. Well…she may not have had two minutes to tap out a simple "Great job baby! Let's celebrate this weekend :-*", but judging from her posts, she did have an hour-plus to watch boy band concert videos on YouTube. Coming from someone who had lectured me on multiple occasions about projecting an appropriate image via social media, this seemed rather hypocritical.
So I called her. Unhappily but calmly explained my situation, how I felt and why. And she thoughtfully listened, apologized for putting out mixed vibes, and congratulated me on my academic accomplish—I'm kidding, she snapped at me like a room full of loaded mouse traps. I've been busy, it's just a soundtrack, you know this is my crazy day, additional defensive remarks. I said I don't have time for this, we'll talk later, and hung up. "Later" didn't come until early the next morning, when she called me, apologized for not giving me the attention I needed, and in between sobs broke up with me.
You read that right. We'd been together just over two years, had known each other for two and a half at that point, and Rox tried to break up with me by phone call. Am I alone in thinking that if you've been dating at least six months, barring extraordinary circumstances, the breakup talk needs to happen in person? Needless to say, I was stunned and hurt.
I say "tried" because two of her best friends verbally smacked some sense into her—one of them, who is now dating one of my best friends, recalled the phrase "What the hell are you thinking?" being thrown around quite a bit—and six hours later she drove to Pleasanton for a tearful apology and reconciliation. As we cuddled amidst the tears, we started laughing at just how silly the whole affair seemed. But in retrospect, I'm not so certain it was silly at all. It exposed a conflict in our personalities, in how we approached our interpersonal conflicts, and it may have set the tone for the rest of our third and final year as a couple.
December 2012 should have been the loudest alarm for two reasons.
First, on the weekend before I drove home for winter break, we had a 3-hour phone conversation that went into the wee hours of Monday morning and at one point she cryptically talked about "taking a break from us." I didn't think much of it. Chalked it up to stress from her work at the VA and from a couple of early medical school rejections—she'd submitted applications to 24 universities just before Thanksgiving.
Then on the morning after I came home, I got all of my final semester grades in: A, A-, B+ and B, good for a 3.5 GPA and a spot on the Dean's List. Rox was the first person I messaged with the good news, and I wasn't surprised when she didn't respond right away. It was on her busiest day of the week, so it would have taken her a while to get back anyways, and I've always tried to be patient. But then noon, 12:30, 1 o'clock rolled around and still no word, and to kill some boredom I hopped on Facebook. Well…she may not have had two minutes to tap out a simple "Great job baby! Let's celebrate this weekend :-*", but judging from her posts, she did have an hour-plus to watch boy band concert videos on YouTube. Coming from someone who had lectured me on multiple occasions about projecting an appropriate image via social media, this seemed rather hypocritical.
So I called her. Unhappily but calmly explained my situation, how I felt and why. And she thoughtfully listened, apologized for putting out mixed vibes, and congratulated me on my academic accomplish—I'm kidding, she snapped at me like a room full of loaded mouse traps. I've been busy, it's just a soundtrack, you know this is my crazy day, additional defensive remarks. I said I don't have time for this, we'll talk later, and hung up. "Later" didn't come until early the next morning, when she called me, apologized for not giving me the attention I needed, and in between sobs broke up with me.
You read that right. We'd been together just over two years, had known each other for two and a half at that point, and Rox tried to break up with me by phone call. Am I alone in thinking that if you've been dating at least six months, barring extraordinary circumstances, the breakup talk needs to happen in person? Needless to say, I was stunned and hurt.
I say "tried" because two of her best friends verbally smacked some sense into her—one of them, who is now dating one of my best friends, recalled the phrase "What the hell are you thinking?" being thrown around quite a bit—and six hours later she drove to Pleasanton for a tearful apology and reconciliation. As we cuddled amidst the tears, we started laughing at just how silly the whole affair seemed. But in retrospect, I'm not so certain it was silly at all. It exposed a conflict in our personalities, in how we approached our interpersonal conflicts, and it may have set the tone for the rest of our third and final year as a couple.
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