Love Conquers All — probably the only word/phrase that has more mellifluous, ear-stroking sonorousness and ringing associations than Estella Del Brenna. Love conquers all, and it conquers not just our delusions and wrongheadedness, but even our wisdom, our principles, our aphorisms, our cleverness, and our ideologies. For ideology tells me that my lack of manliness is what lost me Estella, that my moments of emotional vulnerability and honesty were mistakes that no man should ever make. And yes I do regret them and probably won't show weakness like I did to anyone else in the future—but it is inaccurate to say this is what lost me Estella—and this is why she is so extraordinary, and why she made me believe in a higher love.
The first time we broke up was when she found out I was 31, and not 27. I had treated the subject like the slimiest of Jewish defense lawyers you could caricature in your head, blatantly lying several times after originally leading her to believe I was 24. When the truth came out, after stalking my sister's Instagram posts 10 YEARS BACK (Estella is the only one I've met who can be as monomaniacally obsessive as me), she threw up and lost half a night's sleep, before ending it via text the next morning.
I thought it was just a mood, a #LatinaMode impulse that would swing back from passionate hate to passionate Love in short time; but once it sunk in it was a real breakup, the emptiness overtook me in a swelling wave of ghastly helplessness, a clenching pressure viced its way around my heart, and I tossed and turned on the couch all afternoon rereading her texts and rewatching her videos, in disbelief the Love could be over like that. We hadn't even been "official" for a week, but she deleted all signs of my existence and all the beautiful moments we hitherto had shared on Instagram, and all of a sudden I understood what it feels like for a man to find out his lover had just aborted their child. I like to pretend social media doesn't matter, but what goes on there actually affects me deeply, just like everything in real life affects me deeply—what we had created together, all the potential we had to create together...gone, gone, gone. I wish I could say I forgave her for this after we ended up back together, but that feeling of loss would slightly recur whenever I looked back at her Instagram: a feeling that something so beautiful and significant was lost, and I was now a kind of pariah that she was ashamed of and kept me in her life with traces of reluctance.
But social media is not real life, and in real life, our Love deepened in this time, and we had the most extraordinary moment of intimacy—where the distinction between us wholly disappeared, where all differences and disagreements were lost in gasps of pleasure and cries of each other's name, where it didn't matter I had spent the morning with watery eyes, barely able to hold it together at our team's morning practice—should I get into the source of my sadness? that which is more embarrassing and uncomfortable for me to talk about than the feel of my cock inside Estella, her big brown eyes gazing into mine with trepidation, the way they shift from sexy unease to fulfillment with each thrust inside her, the building rays of joy shooting forth until she twists away and arches her neck, having to close her eyes tigthly like she's trying to hold inside these outbursts of pleasure—I'd much rather focus on that, reflect on that, than the losses. Estella—my love, my Joy, my forgiver—she looked into my eyes and said she loved me endlessly; she knew I would become great and my low moments were just moments and not Who I Was, and we agreed I would never have to go back to my former life again, that of sadness, emptiness, isolation, alcoholism, nostalgia, tragedy—we had each other now, and we would have each other forever.
