It Is Not Me, It Is You

My mother used to tell me that everyone has one person who they will love forever, no matter what happens. For me, that person was you.

We first met each other through my grandmother. It was a day that I will never forget. My grandmother walked into my bedroom and told me that an old friend had just started dating Bronx Science. She demanded that I date someone more successful than Bronx Science so that she could brag to all of her Asian friends on Mahjong night. Then she started telling me about you. To say the least, I was impressed. You seemed knowledgeable, intelligent, and hot. Like, really hot. The photos she showed me of you made me wonder what our children would look like. Your family motto, “Pro Scientia Atque Sapientia,” was the most seductive thing I had ever heard. Nothing is sexier than a phrase that was created 118 years ago in a dead language. Your average SAT score of 1510 made me drool. Before I knew it, I was falling harder for you than when I fell down the Tribeca Bridge stairs.

Over time, we became better acquainted and eventually started dating. Everything was perfect. I thought you were perfect. We stayed up until at least 1:00 a.m. every morning studying and doing work together. We fell asleep on FaceTime nearly every night after giving up on our homework. We ridiculed the Fulton train stop together because of its awful, constant stench of Brooklyn Tech students. We spent our free periods and lunch breaks studying and working in the library together every day like philomaths addicted to 100s, but it was okay because we were philomath addicts together. We stole toilet paper from the janitor’s closet together so we could have toilet paper during the later parts of the school day. We were that couple. The couple that made others want to stab out their eyes and puke out their guts because they were the definition of PDA. I loved it. We loved each other. Your only turnoff was that your mascot is Pegleg Pete, but I allowed myself to ignore this red flag. Then the novelty of our relationship began to wear off, and I started to see you for who you truly are. However, it was too late. I was already lost in the maze of hallways and classrooms that you are composed of.

After three months, the realization of who I was actually dating finally hit me in the face. It hit me in the same way someone feels when they log into Jupiter Ed and see that they failed their latest exam. I thought I was dating an academic weapon. Instead, you are knowledgeable about how to torture children with homework. Intelligent about how to steal hours of sleep right from under helpless little nerds’ noses. Wise about how to grow more white hairs on 3,344 Stuy kids in parallel with all of the white hairs growing in the elderly house across the street. All red flags that I missed because my love made me blind..

Your true self started to shine brighter than Mr. Moran’s face when he realizes that a student is refusing to scan their ID so he can tackle them. You stopped prioritizing me and began to divert all of your time and energy into torturing high schoolers. “How can I make the football team as bad as possible?” “How can I cram so many finals into one week?” “How many escalators can I shut down at once?” Instead of thinking about how smoldering hot your partner is, these were the thoughts that swarmed your hollow skull. All you could concentrate on was what you could do to build your name. What you could do to make 3,344 students despise you. We stopped studying and working until 1:00 a.m. together. We stopped FaceTiming and stopped spending all of our free and lunch periods together. People began gagging whenever they saw a “stuyconfessions” page post about someone’s mother rather than when they saw us.

Our relationship became destructive. Our patience for each other grew thinner than zero point five lead in a mechanical pencil and now we argue every time we speak. We argue over whether Terry’s or Ferry’s is better. We argue about whether there are more doors or wheels in the world. We argue if the red, green, or blue milk carton is the correct milk to drink. You constantly make me feel like a moron and compare me to everyone else, telling me that I am a class A imbecile. You make me feel so [REDACTED] that not even the candy in the counselor’s office can help me. Yet, you are the one who let Bronx Science surpass you in the best specialized high school rankings. How did you even manage to let Queens High School for the Sciences at York College be ranked above you on the list of “Top Ranked New York Schools?” Now that is just pathetic. If I am a class A imbecile, then you are in honors.

The issue is not me, it is you. And I think it is time to break up. You managed to lower my expectations so low to the point where they are almost non-existent. Our relationship deteriorated faster than my GPA, and boy, do we both know how fast my GPA is falling. You are an extremely toxic person to date, and it is not working out for either of us. This relationship makes me feel like [REDACTED] and I would rather take AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, and AP Psychology all at once than continue being with you. I would even rather take Swim Gym. We are done, so go [REDACTED] yourself in the Hudson Staircase.

Never reach out to me again,

Your ex-lover