Nothing plugs the ears of logic like the cotton of love

Unlike most love stories, this one starts with the death of a stranger.

It was the night of May 3rd or the morning of May 4th; I never know what to call the early hours after a late night, when decisions are made by the things we feel are less judged under a dark sky. I had cancelled a date the night before with a young woman I had matched with on a dating app who I knew I had nothing in common with, but who posted gym selfies I couldn’t ignore.

This night her instagram story showed her crying. I was arrogant enough to think it was a result of me canceling our date the night before and reached out. Perhaps I reached out because I was in for the night and I remembered the gym selfies that kept luring me back to her instagram page. “Dude, you know you want something serious and you’re just into this girl for her looks, don’t waste both of ya’lls time”, my friend’s voice played in my head as I typed out a message.

“Hey everything ok?”

“I just feel like no one actually cares about me.”

“Lets get some food, I’m picking you up in 20”

I’ve fought for years with myself trying to decide if I’m a good man or not. That night I want to believe I picked this young lady up to make her feel better and had no other intentions, but we were on our way back to my apartment after having made out in a parking lot after a late dinner.

We rode in my year old Ford Bronco, which I had spent over a year saving for on a teacher salary. We were cruising on a fairly empty Dallas freeway, forgetting the Mavericks had just advanced to the NBA finals after that night’s victory over the OKC Thunder. It was shortly before 2:00 am, but there were already people behind the wheel swerving from celebrating. I felt safe on the far left lane, until a white SUV sped past me on the HOV lane so quickly I felt as though my car was at a stand still. Time didn’t pick back up. Shortly after passing me the SUV tried to exit the HOV lane and hit a divider head on.

Movies make car crashes seem like huge events with big explosions and debris flying everywhere; I’d been in a few wrecks before and knew they weren’t really like that, but this one looked like it was over budget. The Suv flew into the air and instantly caught on fire, it split in half, with large parts of the motor and a wheel dislodging which then flew right at us. The impact with the debris, caused our airbags to deploy. The young lady’s scream jolted me into action after I saw the engulfed SUV crash down and slide into the far right lane. An onlooker and I tried to pry the door of the flaming vehicle open, but it was too warped; I ran for my camping hatchet in my truck but the SUV exploded. The police report a few weeks later stated the driver had been 40 years old, only 4 years older than me.

I was out of work for a week with a concussion and a re-herniated disk from a previous snowboarding accident. It was the end of the school year and classroom assignments for the following year were being passed out by administration. When I returned to work I received mine. 3rd grade, a testing grade I had no interest in teaching. I had spent the last 6 years of my life working at a turn around school in a low income area of south Dallas. The fight with myself whether I am a good man or not had helped me make my decision to stay at this school year after year despite teachers around me only lasting a year or two at most.

I had spent my 6 years there as the grade level chair for Pre-k and Kindergarten, the only grades I wanted to teach. I loved the idea of being a student’s first teacher and giving them their first experience of school. I was so good at turning babies into socially aware students. However, being moved to 3rd grade was the end of what I loved to do, so I denied signing my contract for the following year and made a decision.

My lease was up, my bronco was totaled, and my position at school was gone. I would, once more, live out of a backpack as I explored a different country.

I’d backpacked western Europe almost a decade before and decided this time I would explore the country I was born in but had never really spent much time living in, Mexico.

I rented an air bnb in Merida, the capital of Yucatan. The most peaceful city in the most peaceful state in Mexico. A perfect place to learn the day to day logistics of living in Mexico, and truthfully, a beautiful place to lick the wounds of having lost my truck, classroom, and healthy spine.

My first two weeks there were filled with coffee shops, museums, and dates to bars with live music. I started writing again, and as you can tell, I still am. At the end of the second week of my supposed months long adventure I attended my Godfather’s birthday party after a night out with a group of european travelers. I walked in feeling a bit shaky from the night before, but found reason to compose myself when I was introduced to Lucia.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen her. My second day in Merida my Godfather introduced me to his best friend and his best friend’s wife. I’d always admired my Godfather so I wanted to make a good impression on his friends and win them over. What better way to win people over than to ask them about their children, something I’d learned from teaching. I was shown photos and told stories of their three daughters, all of them beautiful and very different from each other. The eldest daughter had light brown eyes, like caramel ponds and was named Lucia.

“She lives in Queretaro, works extremely hard, and is obsessed with her puppy” her mother told me.

“She seems like an amazing woman, I hope I get to meet her one day”

One day was two weeks later, I stepped into those brown eyes and felt the sweet sinking sensation I’ve always feared. I sat at the only free chair left in the party, which was next to her. We spoke in English to each other about travel, sharing past adventures and after a while I forgot there were other people around, until someone would say something for the room to hear, to which we quickly made inside jokes and giggled quietly in our little corner of the table. It was where my trip had brought me, next to her and suddenly the losses I had experienced seemed more like a trade.

Lucia was in Merida for a week and I tried to see her every chance I got. We went to Karoake, dancing, dinner, spent time with her family at their home and walked the beach hand in hand with my nephew. It just felt right.

Love has a way of magnifying things and of extracting from them.

The week we spent together in Merida had turned the sleepy beach city I was hiding from the world in, into the only place in the world I felt existed. After Lucia went back to Queretaro my daily on foot explorations of Merida felt rudderless. I walked in every direction but not towards anywhere I wanted to be.

I dreaded the blissfull feeling of new love. I knew it was the death of my adventure. I had left Dallas with the hopes of selfishly traveling, worrying only about the adventure and myself, but now no new sites brought me even a tiny fraction of how excited I felt to see her name light up my phone. I wrote her poems, haikus, sonnets. I had to see her again.

I visited her in Queretaro for two weeks and started to get a true understanding of who she is, the hard working lawyer, dedicated to her career and self improvement. I learned about her life and how resilient she is. If her brown eyes had stunned me, our week in paradise dazed me, learning how strong she is convinced me I was in trouble.

Nothing plugs the ears of logic like the cotton of love.

Lucia and I have continued get to know each other for the past couple of months. She spent a weekend with me in Dallas where I pulled out all of the stops. Its a curious thing falling for someone whom you perceive to have their life together when you’re at such an impasse in your own.

I’m back in Queretaro now, this time for a month, before my journey takes me overseas for a wedding and possibly to lay my backpack down in more countries.

In the past few years I’ve been a Best Man twice and been to handfuls of weddings. I’ve been convinced for a while now that love isn’t for me, perhaps its some karmic resolution due to the amount of women whom’s hearts I’ve broken, ghosted, or have been the object of their infidelity.

To feel this way about someone is frightening and more so when they live in a different country and you’re living out of a backpack, jobless, carless, and without direction. Yet here I am. Weighing how illogical this love is to pursue, terrified to lose her or to win her and not be able to find success and a way forward in this new country.

I wonder. Did I take that young lady in Dallas to dinner to make her feel better or because I wanted to sleep with her. I do not know, but it changed the course of my life. Where I am now is a result of whether I was a good man or not.