Photo via: Joel Sossa
We met in England in 2005 because we went together on an Erasmus grant in Sheffield. Well, actually we met before, some months before starting our journey, getting ready for the next year, doing the paperwork together, deciding on our dorm... I had never seen him before around the uni hallways, or simply never took notice of him.
The beginning was no bed of roses: I had a boyfriend back in our country and things were not so clear to me at that time. I started to have feelings for this new boy and I lied to myself by thinking that I just wanted it to be an affair. I told him so "let's make out while we're here and then we will just stop."
Nothing was easy, but at the same time everything was. There's a long list of things we did together that made my stay in UK easier: we walked around, got drunk, talked about everything, danced, traveled, had breakfast, lunch and dinner, stole, laughed, cooked, stayed up all night, listened to music, skipped classes...
While all these things were happening, I became aware that my feelings went further beyond than what I thought. "What should I do?" I asked to myself not a hundred, not a thousand, but a zillions of times. I had to make a decision. Our dream year was vanishing and I feared everything we had vanished as well.
The school year finished and we went back to "normal" life, still without knowing what to do: I told my boyfriend everything, but he forgave me and wanted to keep our relationship. "He's just a whim," he said. I doubted it. Everything would have been easier if he would have just split up with me.
Eventually, I realized that he was not a whim, he was what I wanted, WHO I loved.
Now I know sometimes I hurt him, I took him for granted, I forgot him, I didn't trust him, I shouted at him, not many times, but I did, and I would like to think that all these mistakes I made are part of our story.
Luckily, here we are, almost eight years later. Now life - or work - has wanted to separate us, just for some months, I'd like to think, to prove that all we have been through is worth it.
