Third Draft Personal Essay

It was the summer of 2014. The days lasted longer in Tennessee. I often felt like God wanted me to have more time to enjoy my days in the summer for this reason. The sunsets were beautiful, passionate illustrations put on display every night around eight o’clock. They had more texture when it had been raining that day. I always loved those days. I’ll never forget the summer of 2014.

My sister, Caitlyn, had just graduated from high school, and we got to go on a senior trip in celebration. She had always struggled academically, so this was an incredible accomplishment for her. My family and I went to Italy, a magical place that Caitlyn had always wanted to visit. It would be my first time ever visiting Europe, so I was excited, so excited that nothing could get me down, not even my parents fights.

When I think about it, my parents were always fighting. And it was nasty. Never physical, thank God, but always with pointed words. It was sometimes sadistic in a way, like they would go for a near fatal shot with what they said to each other, just to see the suffering that that they had the power to inflict with simple vocabulary.

My mom’s weapon of choice was often my father’s immaturity, resulting in his prolonged unemployment. This insecurity was easy to target and effective in her attack. Providing for his family is an essential part of a man’s identity, and my father always faltered in that department.

My father’s artillery was often supplied by my mother’s busy schedule. He attacked her validity within motherhood. Those attacks were saved though, well timed, and usually as a counter to her jabs at his unemployment. Who else would raise the children when you’re gone all the time?

This was what love was. It always was a war. It never had survivors.

But this war seemed to take a pause for me when we went to Italy for eight days in the summer of 2014. I dove into a sea of ignorance for a week to try and enjoy a magical voyage celebrating my sister/best friend’s achievement. And it was a fun time. We got to see Rome, Florence, Milan, and Venice. When my sister and I were together, it was like time stopped. The days lasted longer, the wine tasted better, our feet hurt less, we were happier, and we were excited for the next day. These days escaped our grasp just as quickly as we got hold of them.

On our trip back to America, my father became more irritable than he normally was. He was a smoker. My mother always reminded him of his failed attempt to quit – it was part of her armory – so I had put the increased irritability on the fact that he hadn’t been able to smoke in twelve hours. We got stuck in customs due to his belief that a house plant from another country didn’t classify as an invasive species violation. He cursed the system, saying it was all bullshit and pointless. Me, being the brilliant rising sophomore that I was, decided to provide a different perspective to him. I suggested to him that they have rules to keep us safe. That comment, in his perspective, warranted an assurance that he was the Alpha Male in our relationship. What I mean to say is that he looked me dead in the eyes, and said very clearly, that he was going to break my goddamn neck if I said another fucking word.

Love was always a war. And my father planned on taking no survivors.

I went on autopilot for the rest of the trip home. My body was numb, which my therapist suggests was my brain protecting itself from any traumatic experience that could’ve happened. I was on autopilot for a long time after that experience. Throughout my parents’ divorce, which was initiated a week after our Italian getaway, I felt nothing. Those Tennessee sunsets lost their beauty to me. “Passionate” was just a combination of letters and nothing past a word that I put on applications. When it rained, I only saw grey. It seemed that I could never focus on the dramatic pinks and purples that would occur if I could just watch for a little bit longer. I was on autopilot, flying through a safe and secure course of life. And I was okay with that. I was really okay with dying, but I couldn’t leave my mother alone during her life falling apart, so I was doing the closest thing to it.

One day, in the summer of 2015, I found a movie hidden in the crevasse of Netflix’s LGBTQ+ foreign films section. “North Sea Texas” is its title, and I’m not sure why I watched it in the first place. It’s labeled as “Romance.” I’ve always hated the romantic movie. It holds nothing more than a completely unrealistic representation of love. The timelines were always so predictable. Guy sees girl, they date, a point of conflict arises, but they put aside their differences because “love is the strongest force.” Bullshit, if I do say so myself. Love is muddy and painful and draining. I had witnessed what love does to people, and it was never the stronger force. I watched it anyway, perhaps because it looked unsaturated and dull, an aesthetic with which I identified. I could just watch it with popcorn in my lap, maybe have a good cry, and call it a day.

This story is no typical romance. It has these growing pains that correlate with the boy becoming who he is, mixed with this shame and sadness that was so familiar to me. It follows this boy, Pim, on his journey to accepting his sexuality and his relationship with a close friend Gino, which quickly turns into a romantic relationship. It’s excruciating to say the least. Pim falls in love with this guy who is too ashamed of himself to admit that he has romatic feelings for him, resulting in Pim feeling used and in this ocean current of being pulled in and out of himself in a way. And it doesn’t turn out perfect. Pim and Gino don’t live happily ever after. They meet for one last time in a furious spout of love and hatred for one another.

While the story and emotions in the actors’ performance were so intensely sad and filled with disparity, the cinematography could be described by the word “gentle.” Even sex scenes, which American cinema depends on for profit, was gentle. The color pallet was a sea of pastels and it was all very bright despite the subject matter being about gay loneliness. It was, in essence, a modern tragedy with a cinematographic juxtaposition, and it taught me more about being alive then I’ve ever learned.

Love is, in fact, powerful. But it has its own morality. It has the possibility to be a beautiful thing that inspires creation and peace in the world, but it can also be toxic and drive people to hate themselves and others. Take Pim and Gino. They love each other, but it’s such a powerful force that it scares Gino to the point of denying himself to avoid confronting his love for Pim. Gino, then, becomes kind of an asshole because he has so much fear. This is nowhere near good or healthy, but love has that power.