And so disappointed, I let true love, my life goal #2, crash into the forefront.
My father was a womanizer in his youth. He settled down when he met my mother. Loyalty ranks high in his book—she did stick with him through the war and torture.
I met a girl, named O. Tough. A loud mouth. Wouldn’t take shit from nobody. Fire. Crazy. We had something…a lot like love.
When I brought my girlfriend home to dinner finally…she greeted my father. my father cleared his throat and ruffled the newspaper in his hands to cover his face. He didn’t acknowledge her.
Now that I think of it, O was just like my mother. O would stick with me through anything, the worst of the worst. I began work at a financial consulting type job, the kind of job I had sneered at just a year ago when I had been in college and I saw all the fake bleeding hearts sell out to join Wall Street. I told my father that I was out of school for one year and I managed older people who all made six figures. He didn’t acknowledge that either.
Because of the work, I saw O only once a week. We went to Vegas and blew some money. I had to drive back from Vegas to work at 9 AM and so I smoked a cigar to stay awake. It burned out and then I burned through another one and made it in time.
Of course, although money is cited as the leading cause of arguments in relationships, that is not the real reason couples break up. The money is just a scapegoat for some real intrinsic problems. I’ve learned that it’s not that there’s not enough money, but rather that there’s not enough love to hold things together.
Later I quit. Later we ended.
| <—Part 8 | Part 10—> |
