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Like many or even all of us I have made many mistakes in life. I have learned to overcome my personal demons and have been able to move on and enjoy life to the best of my ability. But there is but one thing that I experienced a long time ago that still haunts me to this day. The pain and loss of this event is the one thing I have never been able to get over. This pain is not physical but rather psychological and emotional. It is incurable and utterly indescribable. These events occurred during the year of 1989 and I was still just 19 years old at that time.
When I was in the Marine Corp. I met a young woman through my best friend who happened to be his sister in law. Her name was Theresa. I called her often and we had quite the long distance relationship with the hope of one day meeting in person and coming together once and for all. After leaving the military I contacted my friend and decided to go out to Hawthorne, Nevada to finally meet his sister in law and begin what I thought would be a new life with the one woman I wanted to spend forever with. As soon as we met we hit it off and our relationship continued without a hitch. My love for her grew by the day and after about six months I had decided that this was the woman I wanted to marry.
There were several problems with this: she was still only 17 and living with her parents and she had a father who was a racist and hated me for my skin tone. Her mother and the rest of her family accepted me as one of the family but her dad made it clear that he did not want his lovely caucasion daughter fraternizing with a man of color although I am of Latino descent. Either way, he made it his business to make our lives miserable and to put as much pressure on Theresa as he could. Often all of that pressure spilled over into our relationship and sort of tended to poison the well.
Because of her age I couldn't just run away with her without her dad filing some criminal charges on me as I was 19 on the verge of 20. Despite all that we endured we stood strong together, but in the long run the pressure turned out to be too much for the both of us. We started arguing and lashing out at each other until things worsened. It all came to a head when her father beat her once for having seen her with me in town. She came to my apartment crying and her friend told me what happened. I went to her house filled with rage and threatened her father that the next time he put his hands on her he was going to have to deal with me.
We were about 2 weeks away from Christmas and plaaning how we were going to spend it together when suddenly it all came crashing down at once. We ended up having a heated argument that ended with us breaking up and me flinging a stack of her pictures at her. It was the most painful moment of my life. From that time on it took me six years of tears and depression to get over the break up. Everyone I saw on the street looked like her even though I have moved a few thousand miles away. Every song reminded me of her and brought me down to tears. Here I am today a married man with two gown daughters and a wife and every once in a while I still find myself thinking of her and what might have been.
Sometimes a song comes out that reminds me of her and surprisingly I still break down in tears and have moments of sadness. I wonder what became of her life. Is she alive still? Did she marry and have a family? Does she still think of me? Nothing hurts more than love. Nothing is more painful than a broken heart. This experience still hurts but it has also taught me to love those I can today and cherish them more. A very painful lesson with lifelong practicality is what drives me to be the best person I could be to my friends and family. If ever there was something I ever regretted in life was losing the love of my life.
