It’s not my fault, and you might think that would be comforting.

It’s not anything I did or didn’t do. It’s not because I wore that dress that one time and my panty line showed. It’s not because I ate in front of him a few times or ran away from him at dinner once or ignored him once at lunch. It’s not because I sat next to him and was too aggressive or because I was never quite aggressive enough about what I felt.

It’s not because I performed hyper femininity poorly or because my response to him was too much performance and not enough real girl.

He was never going to walk away from the model thin blonde girls with Ivy League degrees so he could be with a fat woman with a degree from a college he’s never heard of.

I can live with that. I can breathe. Because I didn’t fail in some ineffable way.

It’s not my fault.

I have a different romantic script than the script he has, and. My script said I had to let him go, for the good of our upwardly mobile community. I fought for a while. Then, I could fight no more.

There are some things you just can’t fight.

Summer love is seductive. It convinces your that anything is possible.

Colonialism is seductive. It convinces you that you can start over.

I already made my choices, and they were bad ones. This society had already taught me where I belong in the world that belongs to him. Society had already taught him the entire world belongs to him.