By: Alexander Espinoza '25
A tragedy is a horrible thing. Even worse is a tragedy in waiting.
I often look back on TV shows and get captured by a feeling of haplessness or gnawing anxiety that grabs my head and leans in close enough so that I can just feel its frigid breath enveloping me with sorrow, while it whispers to me the fates of the characters I’ve held so beloved, and the idea that no matter how many times I rewatch this entire show or that particular scene, the narrative was already decided years ago and I’m only able to watch the poor decisions the character makes happen even though I wish they could realize the idiocy of what they’re doing and stop and have the life they truly deserve, but can’t. Comparable to this is the regret of the past, of what could’ve been if you had just stepped off the road you were on just an instant sooner.
The closest thing I have to my own fall of Rome, or reason to crash out, is getting ghosted by a girl I was head over heels for. Utterly abandoned. Some part of me wishes that the memories I have were blinded by nostalgia or drunk in emotion, but the memories that permeate my mind are all exact or as vivid with color as I experienced them then.
The tragedy spanned over eight months and began in Northfield, Minnesota during the summer of ‘23. Leaving an orientation for the program I was there for, I left tired and slumped. I found myself with my roommate, two of our friends, and M. Earlier, we had gone to town and bought a Monopoly set for later and later came. We sat on a wooden bench, surrounded by a black mist that made our group seem like the only people amidst the lonely tree by our side. Had this been a show I was rewatching, I’d pause here and just scream at the show, screaming at the character to go back to his room and to forget M. But no. That night, M and I became acquaintances as she laughed at my false accusation that my roommate was too broke to purchase my store of wares.
Waking up the following morning, I thought nothing of the night before. But by some greater will, M and I were once again put together in a group and we chatted. Chatting turned to learning about each other, knowing that we both watched some niche YouTube series, she lived in L.A., I lived in Santa Ana, she liked comics, and her favorite color was pink in contrast to her almost all-black wardrobe. At a cookout event, we continued to talk, we walked away from everyone, but still in view of the group, just at the corner of their world lost in our own. The sun began to set and disappear beyond a horizon of greenery, no mountains or ocean to tuck the sun in gently, just lost in the green nature. We sat, people-watching, noticing how Vijay missed the soccer ball and how Jackson fell on his ass while trying to do some neat trick. M and I noticed how a couple had gone beyond the shrubbery on the path behind us and we joked about them and the antics they definitely shouldn’t have been doing on some random trail in a college park. With the sun drowned in the green, we were both obfuscated, nothing more than silhouettes. With a campfire starting, we went back to the group, illuminating each other and once again continuing in conversation. Night turned to day and we talked more, during study blocks, we listened to music together, not doing any work, just talking to each other. Even on the trips out of college, we weren’t separated, in the Mall of America, she took photos of me next to Spongebob, a Mark Wahlberg cut-out, and a LEGO Mario.
For the entire week, we were conjoined at the hip, my roommate teased me about M, probably salty about his own affairs because he had fallen for a lesbian, but still bitterly supportive of my general accomplishment. We talked for what seemed like hours, about the music we listened to, the comics she read, the games we both played, and absolutely everything we wanted to talk about we did. For months after the program, we continued to text and call, even through junior year, we talked, and then summer started again.
A decrescendo began. I didn’t even see the tragedy coming until it was there and I was talking to a void that only responded with “Read at 8:03 pm.”
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