cherry blossom love
picking up scattered pieces from the ground every morning
My journal entry after the second date wrote, “please, please, please go well this time. I don’t think I can survive another heartbreak, all over again.” I was happy to meet someone I felt a strong connection with but also was terrified of losing what I had just found.
As you had already guessed, It didn’t go well. I got cheated again. More precisely, I was the person whom he was cheating on his girlfriend with, and I didn’t know any of that while I was in it. Part of me felt really dumb, completely throwing myself in it, but other parts of me were proud of taking a leap of faith. I trusted my intuition, I took the risk, and I let myself be vulnerable. In past relationships, I was on the other side of the spectrum. I didn’t text right back after receiving a message, and I almost never talked about moving into a serious relationship. Plus, I was the kind of person who never left my apartment’s door unlocked or let my phone’s battery go under sixty percent. When a guy told me, “you’re beautiful” or “I really like you.” I laughed and said like, “okay, are you drunk? or high?”
A cold winter night, I was exhausted from working long hours all week, but I dragged myself to meet him after work. He made me wait for twenty minutes outside freezing, and I didn’t even find him attractive at first sight. I questioned my judgment to say yes to this on Friday night. I was thinking about using the last train as my escape plan from this date. Though, we ended up talking until two in the morning. We both liked to talk about random shit from the existence of aliens to depressing Bojack Horseman episodes. I missed the last train, and he walked with me until I caught a cab, and we saw each other the next week and a week after that. At that time, I didn’t think too much about it, and I didn’t care if I heard back from him, but I should’ve cared more. That shabby bar we spent five hours should’ve been the sign.
The frozen lake and ear-biting wind didn’t feel that cold when we took a walk at night. We zipped our jackets up to our chins and held each other’s hands. Cherry blossom trees were arranged along the lake, looking naked and lonely. Still, on the inside, the seeds were simmering slowly but surely. When we got to the end of the path, we paused and stayed there for a while, not ready to leave yet. He told me about losing his best friend from OD, and I told him about being cheated on in a very embarrassing way in my past.
“I didn’t care that he cheated on me, what bothered me more was he kept lying even after I found out,” I said.
“Oh fuck that, that’s the worst,” he replied.
Now I know what’s worst; being told so from a guy who is doing exactly that. The connection I felt genuine was his fake, disgusting lies. Lies top of other lies. He told me he didn’t play games. He came to my office to see me, introduced me to his friends, and we talked about the future. I was trying to take it slow, but he was the one saying like “I’ve already fantasized about marrying you,” and another time, “I told my mom about you.” He had a solid girlfriend at the exact same time. He didn’t need to bring that up just to hurt me. Well, he played the game REALLY WELL.
I could smell spring in the air when I called him after my night yoga class. On the bright city streets, I looked up and noticed that the green color buds of cherry blossoms were getting fatter. The anticipation of spring got mixed up with my hope. I waited longer than I usually waited, but he didn’t pick up. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t, so I purposely rang just before I got on the subway. I lost signal but still checked my phone every five minutes. He didn’t call back. After a couple of hours, I received a text, “heyyooooo.” Another fucking sign that I had missed. He was cooking dinner for his girlfriend that night.
One weekend, I needed to travel to a different city for a friend’s wedding. I jokingly asked if he wanted to come along. He said he would love to come. I asked him on three different occasions to make sure he was still on board. He ended up not coming to the wedding with me, but he came to the hotel room I was staying in, and we spent the next two days together. A night before we went back to the city, we had drinks at a bar by the canal. The bar was tiny and dark and almost empty — just one bartender and one lady smoking at the counter. A big orange surfing board covered almost the entire ceiling. The smoking lady seemed to enjoy her own time and space, so we left two seats between hers and ours. Soon after, we found out that she was the owner of this bar, and the bartender was her son. The son refilled her glass before it reached the bottom and she lighted his cigarette whenever he put one between his lips.
“So are you guys dating?” a bartender asked.
“She’s…” he looked at me, “my girlfriend, I think.”
“Oh… am I?”
He started kissing me on my cheek, and the mother said, smiling, “no flirting allowed in this bar.” I pretended to look outside just in case if I was blushing. From a tiny window, I spotted some cherry blossom trees by the canal holding cute florets, growing, waiting patiently for the perfect moment to bloom.
After we came back from the trip, I pulled out my spring coat from the back of my closet and polished my pastel-colored heels. Planning a picnic for spring and camping for summer, I was filling my mental calendar with him in it. As puffy whites on cherry blossoms tips got heavier, he stopped picking me up from my office and blowing kisses from his window. His response got even more choppy because, later I found out, he was on a trip with his girlfriend. Only a few weeks later, when I got upset about not communicating with each other, he broke up with me over text. I squeezed the phone with both of my hands. Was it my hand or my phone that was shaking?
As I was crawling inside a cave, cherry blossoms burst out its shells to paint the sky; the contrast of pink color over the blue sky burned on my mind fiercely and ached my heart. Everyone rushed to a park and riverbank to have a picnic under the trees. I stayed inside and didn’t even open the curtain. Our short-lived relationship was just like cherry blossoms. It bloomed intensely for a week and died very quickly. The time it spent brewing its mix inside, while I waited enough for us to bloom, it was all for nothing.
The entire show was a joke. He always brought flowers to his girlfriend, cooked for her, bought nice souvenirs, planned a getaway trip, went to see her, instead of I went to his place, I planned a trip, received a leftover souvenir and dinner, no flower or chocolate, just bunch of bullshit. I should’ve not trusted a boy (not a man because real men don’t cheat) like that. No wonder why he felt miserable in spring and hated sunshine. No wonder why he always woke up in the afternoon and wasted his day doing nothing.
People said you could only connect dots looking back, and I thought I connected the dots by meeting him. All of the failed relationships and heartbreaks made sense, but he was just another dot. I was still dropping dots, not connecting them just yet. When I bike in the morning, I deliberately avoid getting near his apartment but also hope to catch a glimpse of him. As much as I hate to think about him, I see him in my dream almost every night and cry when I wake up. My brain cannot rewire my thoughts quickly enough, the wound feels fresh, and I spend a whole day trying to pick up scattered pieces from the ground. By the time all of the cherry blossom petals fall off from its branches, I will be okay. It will bloom even more beautifully next year. But for now, I wish we never met.
“Even though it killed some parts of me, I’m surviving another heartbreak, all over again, and I will be a better version of myself.” I wrote in my last journal.
*This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
