The Beginning of the End

"I told him that things were never going to work between us," she sobbed as her friend held her close and rubbed circles on her back. "He just doesn't understand how to be responsible for himself and he never makes his own decisions. Everything he does has to be okay-ed by his 'mommy' first, it's absolutely repulsive," she choked out between sobs. Sabrina had just ended a long-term relationship with the boy she thought was the love of her life. Sabrina couldn't imagine a week without Christopher let alone the rest of her life. Everything felt like it was crumbling around her she had just ended the best relationship she had ever been in and she had many regrets.

Sabrina and Christopher had met during a family vacation six years prior to dating and they stayed friends through that time despite never seeing each other face-to-face over those six years. The day they met was like something from a movie. Sabrina was hanging out by the lake with some girls she had met at the campground earlier that day when Christopher stopped and asked if he could join. The girls giggled and welcomed him into their semi-circle, but all Sabrina could do was blush and smile politely. Christopher shared a polite smile and Sabrina saw his cheeks flood with a pale shade of pink. During the rest of the afternoon, Christopher followed the girls around happy to do whatever they said. The group went swimming, biking and sat on the shore by the lake with ice cream before parting ways at sundown. Sabrina and Christopher said a shy 'goodbye' and went their separate ways. The rest of the week continued this way until the last morning when Sabrina had a friend give Christopher her phone number so they could stay in contact. Sabrina and Christopher exchanged a few texts from time to time following that vacation, but communication often ended when their lives got busy with a sporadic text during a big performance or before important events but broke off all together about a year after they met. Until Christopher's high school graduation that was. Christopher sent Sabrina a text after a long period of time with no contact to invite her to his graduation party, hoping to reconnect before he shipped off for Naval training.

Once Christopher shipped off for training contact between him and Sabrina became more frequent. When Christopher joined the Navy and was at training through writing letters back and forth the two began to learn more about each other. The letters started out as simple uplifting reminders that even though the training was hard Christopher could handle it and eventually became love letters sent with anticipation for a response. During Christopher's training Sabrina actually had the opportunity to go with Christopher's family (none of whom she had met before) to go visit him at training. The visit was wonderful and the two began dating during that visit. After Sabrina and Christopher started dating Christopher's Mother seemed a little bit off, but Sabrina thought maybe it was just because they were leaving the next day and she was sad. Despite the distance and limited communication Sabrina and Christopher began to build a strong relationship. Through the words written in pen on paper, they became inseparable. Their love blossomed and was in full bloom when Christopher got home.

When Christopher returned home the couple began traveling to see each other every weekend despite the long drives to spend only a few hours together. Every moment of driving was worth every second they got to spend together. As the couple continued spending time together after Christopher's return Sabrina began to have a suspicion that Karen (Christopher's Mother didn't like her very much. Karen often insisted that she did like Sabrina and that she was happy Sabrina came to visit all the time. The more time Sabrina spent at Christopher's house though the more she felt unwanted and unwelcome. Despite the sinking feeling of being disliked Sabrina spent Christmas and New Years with Christopher's family. Over the Holidays the couple became fully enthralled with every aspect of each other. Christopher became increasingly clingy, but Sabrina wrote it off thinking to herself this is fine for now and once he's been home for a while, we won't have to be so wrapped up in each other all the time. Though Sabrina kept hoping they would gradually have more personal space and time to spend with other friends Christopher became more clingy and obsessive wanting to spend every moment together and continued to ignore their friends and other responsibilities. Sabrina tried to be patient and wait for things to cool off a bit, but six months after him returning home he was still so wrapped up in spending all of his time with her and being attached to her side that Sabrina couldn't handle it anymore.

Sabrina needed space, time with her friends and her own personal space sometimes. After multiple conversations with Christopher and having nothing change she started to become distant and started tried to avoid spending time with him. Sabrina began to feel as though Christopher and herself were one person instead of two separate people. Sabrina needed to be her own person, not just Christopher's girlfriend. The more Christopher clung to her the more people avoided hanging out with them- and the more Karen hated Sabrina. Christopher let his grades fall, constantly missed assignments and started missing classes to spend time with Sabrina, who was growing more and more distant as time went on. Christopher and Sabrina started having small disagreements about little things and as the days went by they began arguing about bigger things that they would never agree on and it strained their relationship. Arguments that started over where to eat or what movie to see turned into arguments over politics and religious beliefs, they started tearing each other apart over small differences in opinion and their relationship began unraveling before their eyes.

Sabrina was miserable, she actively avoided being alone with Christopher and often would tell him she was busy so she didn't have to see him. Any time Sabrina and Christopher hung out with Sabrina's friends he would constantly be touching her or leaning on her and she did not like it. When Sabrina would ask Christopher for a little space or for him to sit somewhere else for a while he would act wounded and then he would go right back to doing what he was asked not to do. The constant touching and pouting and disregarding Sabrina's wishes became too much. Christopher continued to ignore when Sabrina would ask him to do, or not do things and it began to strain their relationship. Christopher and Sabrina still continued to visit his family on the weekend and the more time Christopher and Sabrina spent as a couple the more Sabrina could feel the hatred from Karen.

Karen continued to make Sabrina feel less than and like she was trash. Karen would make subtle comments alluding to the idea that Sabrina was a whore, or that something she wore was appalling because it showed too much skin or even that she was never going to be good enough for Christopher. When Sabrina would mention anything about KArento Christopher he would wave it off as though Sabrina was crazy. Christopher would constantly try to come up with explanations for his mother's behavior and it was not reassuring for Sabrina at all. Sabrina began to realize that no matter what she did, or what she wore or even how she acted she was always going to be less than in the eyes of Karen. Sabrina had finally had enough and she had to break it off. When Sabrina finally ended things Christopher messaged her every day telling her that he loved her and knew that they would be able to work things out and he constantly messaged her asking her to be his girlfriend again.

After weeks of trying to explain to Christopher that they were broken up and that they were never getting back together Sabrina decided to do something drastic, she took a really nice selfie and posted it on Instagram with the caption, "Just dropped my new single, it's me I'm single." After the Instagram post-Christopher was extremely upset made a post about being depressed and how life sucks when you have to move on, but don't want to and then he removed her from all social media platforms and continued on with his life as though Sabrina had never existed. Despite the breakup, Sabrina continued trying to help Christopher get his studies back on track and trying to get him to take his assignments and responsibilities seriously. Christopher slowly let his grades fall, stopped doing course work, stopped studying for classes and even began skipping weeks of classes at a time.

Over the course of the Summer following the breakup, Sabrina began to move on, but would often wonder how things would have been if she had stayed with Christopher. Small things that reminded Sabrina of Christopher began to make her very sad and she slipped into a mild depression and spent the second half of Summer feeling relatively numb to everyday experiences. Things that typically made Sabrina happen didn't spark her interest any more, things she loved to do became uninteresting and Sabrina began avoiding interactions with groups of people and social gatherings. Sabrina closed herself off from the world and began spending more and more time on her own.