Some names in the essay have been changed.

This post was originally written in 2017 and republished in 2021

Illustration by Sarah Sarwar

It was Christmas Day and we were somewhere between New Mexico and Arizona. I sat in the backseat of my family’s gold Expedition staring out the window at the winter desert. I’d thought once the semester was over, this whole mess would dissipate and I’d be able to breathe. I’d kept telling myself just make it to December — once you’re with your family, everything will be ok. But it was December and I was in a car with my family on our way to Disneyland and I still felt a heaviness in my chest. My dad was driving, my mom was dozing off, my sister was fast asleep on her neck pillow and my brother was fidgeting with his iPod; I was grateful to get away.

Instead of doing the whole Christmas thing — lights, tree, festivities, presents — my family decided to put that money into a Disneyland vacation. Ever since I can remember, it’s been a tradition to watch the Disney Christmas Day Parade on Christmas morning while we opened gifts, drank hot chocolate and ate tamales. The parade is absolutely cheerful with celebrity performances of pop-infused Christmas classics, dancing gingerbread men and candy canes, and Mickey and Minnie dressed in holiday apparel. My sister had never been to any Disney parks and wanted to experience the holiday magic we watch every year at home. My siblings and I weren’t little kids anymore — Yvette was almost 30, I’d just turned 20 and J.J. was 17 — so maybe it was nostalgia that influenced us to ditch our traditional plans. We were busy growing up and rarely had more than a weekend with each other, so why not take a trip to spend time with each other.

My parents couldn’t afford flights for all of us, so they opted to drive to California — to enjoy the scenery and each other’s company for a solid 23 hours in a moving vehicle. Yvette ran with it and made our trip as dorky as possible, complete with custom-made green shirts for each of us that featured a Christmas tree on top of a station wagon with the words “Marquez Family Christmas 2010,” and on the back, “Disney or Bust!”

We left South Texas on Christmas Eve, making our slow crawl out of Texas. We drove for 13 hours before we stopped for the night in El Paso. The next day, for the first time in my life, Christmas morning wouldn’t be celebrated in my childhood home with the same smells and the same warmth. J.J. wouldn’t excitedly wake Yvette and I in our room so we could unwrap the treasures underneath the Christmas tree that my dad had carefully decorated with trinkets and ornaments we made in elementary school. I wouldn’t eat my mom’s tamales or sip hot chocolate with a mountain of melting marshmallows. We wouldn’t watch the Disney Christmas Day Parade.

Christmas was put on pause for the day since we needed to hit the road before the sun came up to get to the happiest place on earth on time. As we put miles behind us on the grey, cloudy day, Christmas songs played on every single available radio station. It was cute for the first 30 minutes. Have yourself a merry little Christmas… Let your heart be light… From now on your troubles will be out of sight. Sleigh bells and carols rang in my ears on a loop. It was maddening. My dad gave up and put in the only CD in the car, Selena’s top hits. I was grateful for a longer respite when we stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, and then again for lunch because it was the only restaurant open for miles.

When we got back on the road, even though I was wearing my coziest sweatpants and college sweatshirt and had a travel blanket on me, I felt cold in the car. My Blackberry felt like a brick on my lap, adding a pound every time it lit up, so I tried hiding it in the seat pocket in front of me. I had 20 text messages from Elena.

i just want you back.

i want to visit you in austin like i did last year, and know that i belong to you.

i miss you soo much.

i wish you could feel the way i do. i know you can.

there has to be some part of you that loves me like i love you.

I’d avoided her messages all semester long, dodging her questions, but that only made things worse.

Elena, I’m with my family. I can’t talk right now. It’s Christmas, you should enjoy your family while you can.

In September I called Elena one night to let her know I’d crossed a line, but I didn’t tell her which line. I was in my dorm room, alone and in the dark too ashamed to speak the truth. I said I’d only kissed Gloria but that wasn’t the entire truth. Elena was more than a thousand miles away in her own dorm room and she believed me and said it was ok, that it was a mistake.

She knew Gloria. They’d met a few months earlier when Elena visited me in Austin during Easter break. I showed her my favorite places to eat in my new city, the coolest boutique shops near campus, introduced her to my new friends, including Gloria, who I spent most of my time with. Elena didn’t understand why I was crying; Gloria and I didn’t really mean it, we were only joking, right?

I couldn’t tell her that I liked kissing and fucking another girl who wasn’t her, that I had feelings for Gloria. I was too selfish. But if I had told her, at least it would’ve been the end. I wouldn’t have kept her tethered to false hope that we could still fix us.

Elena was my best friend in high school. My junior year we flirted with each other for months, tension building until we finally kissed in my bedroom one Friday night. We knew what we wanted even though we didn’t know how to talk about it or name it. I told myself over and over it wasn’t girls that I liked, just her. From that night on, our “friendship” intensified. We didn’t talk about it to anyone. We kept each other a secret.

We gave each other looks that said follow me into the band hall bathroom, no one’s there after 5 pm practice. I pressed her against the yellow-tiled wall and wanted to breathe all of her in. We held hands underneath cafeteria tables like it wasn’t so obvious to our friends. She wrote me notes in class and gave them to me while we passed each other in the hallways. I can’t wait to see you later. After the movies and Denny’s, I would put my foot on the brake for a brief stop at the unlit cul de sac on her street to kiss her goodbye instead of risking it in front of her house. She would come over to my house to study for AP environmental science and I locked the door behind me every time. We rented movies we never watched. I thought of her when I listened to that one song on the Juno soundtrack. I kiss you all starry eyed, my body’s swinging from side to side / I don’t see what anyone can see / In anyone else but you.

When I moved a few hours away for college while she was finishing her senior year of high school, I Facebook messaged her how much I missed her. We were long distance but I didn’t care, she still gave me butterflies. When she visited me during Easter break, I was a little braver, a little bolder, and held her hand in public at the bus stop. But I was still afraid. I was only out to Gloria, so I introduced Elena as my friend to my other college friends. By the time summer rolled around, we had been together for more than two years and still kept each other a secret, lying through our teeth to our families, hiding our affection, isolating ourselves and our feelings.

We went to the beach that summer, before we both left for college. She was moving to the East coast for her freshman year and I was going back to Austin. I was so proud of her for getting into a stellar school with scholarships and for getting the fuck out of our hometown. I wanted her to be free; I wanted us both to be free.

I held her hand underneath the ocean surface so not even the seagulls could see our fingers intertwined. I felt invincible as the waves hit us.

Gloria and I met through a program that helps freshmen navigate a giant university like UT and teams them up with other first-year students with similar interests and majors. It was a pure coincidence that we lived down the hall from each other in the same dorm. We studied for tests together and ate dinner together on most nights.

On the weekends, instead of partying and drinking like the vast majority of our classmates, we walked to the Blockbuster down the street to rent a movie and pile a bunch of blankets on the floor of Gloria’s dorm to watch it. We talked for hours after the credits rolled.

Gloria was the first person I chose to come out to. I trusted her not to turn me away, and I was right.

We kept in touch over the summer. She sent me a gold-foiled journal with an illustration of a woman crying on the front of it with colorful birds on her head like a crown and a bag of M&M’s, my favorite candy. She wrote me a letter and said they were presents for my half birthday. “I am really glad we met and became friends. So thank you for opening your world to me and I hope you have felt that I’ve done the same,” she scrawled on a piece of computer paper.

When we came back for our sophomore year, the magnetism between us was undeniable. After drinking with friends one night to celebrate the start of the new semester, we held hands while I slept in her bed. I squeezed her hand as I pretended to fall asleep and she stroked my face and pushed my hair back. I liked it but I was confused and wondered what her intentions were, especially since we were drunk. We didn’t mention a word about it when we texted the following days. We gave each other more hugs when we saw each other on campus. The next weekend when we hadn’t been drinking, I found myself in her bed again, interlocking my fingers with hers and our faces close to each other. I leaned in and kissed her on her cheek and soon enough my lips found hers.

Even after I told Elena that I had cheated on her, I didn’t stop. Gloria and I spent all our time together freshman year; I wanted to continue spending time with her sophomore year too. Only this time, every weekend it was orange juice and vodka, hickies, moans, and sex for hours until we got hungry again.

Everything happened so fast and intensely; I didn’t have time to make sense of it all. I wasn’t thinking, I was feeling — times a thousand. I vacillated between desire and heartache, passion and sorrow, excitement and misery, weaving a myriad of highs and lows. I wanted Gloria. It hurt to face Elena.

I kept both Gloria and Elena tangled in my mess. I told Gloria I broke up with Elena but I didn’t exactly make a clean break. I gave Elena doubtful responses about our relationship and wasn’t firm in saying we were over; I told her I didn’t know what was going on between Gloria and I. I knew I was breaking Elena’s heart and I knew she was far away from home for the first time and didn’t have any friends yet so I thought telling Elena I loved her and that everything would be ok would help soften the blow. I made things worse.

Elena thought I strayed, but that I could come back to her. She started texting me, calling me and messaging me on Facebook more frequently, more frantically.

do you want to be with me?
am i the same person you fell for almost 3 years ago? because i have faith that i am and there’s still room for us to exist…

As weeks passed by, her messages became angrier.

why the fuck don’t you just tell me the truth. that you’re just waiting for me to get over this so that you all can be in a relationship in peace? why couldn’t you just say no??? you cheated on me. you CHEATED on me. wtf is wrong with you????

I forwarded her calls when they became a dozen too many, and when I did pick up, I didn’t say much. I didn’t write back. I was paralyzed and had no idea how to process the feelings caught in my throat. I was guilty and heartbroken and I wasn’t ready to let go of Elena: my first kiss, my first time, my first girlfriend, my first love, my first everything and before that, my best friend. I didn’t know how to imagine my life without her. But at the same time, I eagerly awaited being with Gloria. Every time I was with her I was happy. It was like our friendship last year but heightened. I wasn’t being fair to either one.

Gloria and I were under the covers in her apartment one night and my phone kept ringing. I put it on silent and went back to bed. We were dozing off when I noticed the glow from my phone. I got up to turn it off but I saw I had 30 missed calls from Elena. I felt panicked, like something really horrible had happened. I called her from Gloria’s bathroom.

“Hey, are you ok?” I asked.

“Why didn’t you answer? Are you with her?”

“No, I’m home, what’s wrong?” I had perfected lying by this point.

“Yvonne, I don’t know what to fucking think. I don’t know what to fucking do.”

The longer I was on the phone, the angrier Gloria would be. I hung up as soon as I could.

I took the only math course I needed for my degree that semester and attempted to do my homework in my dorm’s study room late at night after working at my university’s newspaper. I settled onto my favorite plush sofa, beat and stressed, trying to finish my standard deviation homework and contemplating what I should do. I waited for the guy who would always play the UP theme song on the grand piano in the study room to give me a different reason to cry.

In the dead of night in the study room, I felt alone. I desperately wished I had someone who would listen. I wanted to ugly cry into someone’s shoulder and be consoled and hugged and given some advice. I called my only gay friend, Mariana. She was the only person I could talk to about this horrid situation because she was the only other person who knew I was gay and could possibly understand. We were friends in high school but weren’t out to each other, officially, until we graduated.

“Yvonne, you can’t do this to yourself or to them. If you want to be with Gloria, you’re going to have to stop talking to Elena completely.”

For a moment, relief swept over me. I wanted Elena’s cascade of probing questions to stop. Why? How could you? It was tempting to never have to answer them.

But the moment passed. It seemed like an impossible feat. I couldn’t do that, not now. I thought, no one knows, who will be there for her?

Once my family and I arrived at Disneyland, outfitted in our matching green shirts, our Christmas was able to commence. I was determined to forget about Elena and about being sad and actually have fun. Once the park gates opened for the day, crowds of families with children swarmed the entrance. My brother grabbed a map and we sat on a bench to plot our day and give us some time to adjust to the huge crowds.

What the Disney Christmas Day Parade doesn’t show you on TV is that the holidays are the busiest time of the year for Disneyland; people from literally all around the world visit with their toddlers in strollers. It was impossible to navigate around so many tiny humans and wheels down Main Street, U.S.A. I was slightly comforted knowing I could be swallowed by a mob at any given moment.

J.J. and I led the way to Tomorrowland and got in line for Space Mountain with my sister. We were prepared to wait for at least an hour on all the big attractions. We were at Disney to spend time with each other and time was all we had in lines.

“How did you like working for the Daily Texan?” Yvette asked me.

“I loved it! I wrote a lot of cool stories, but working late kinda sucked sometimes,” I told her.

I told them about a story I wrote about an organization that helps immigrant workers fight wage theft, about how I had to interview city officials about a transportation bond and how I was starting to feel like a real journalist. I told them about how stressful it was working against newspaper deadlines.

What I really wanted to tell them was how I felt like shit the entire semester. I wanted to confess my mistakes, announce my messiness to them just so I could tell them that I was gay.

Instead, we hopped in a cart that launched us into fake space and into a million stars.

I thought I could escape at Disneyland. It was the happiest place on Earth and I thought maybe I could absorb some of it. The second day at Disneyland, my sister and I bought matching Minnie ears with a sequined red bow and even those iconic ears could not save me from feeling like my insides were made out of concrete.

I hugged my mom and dad sporadically while we waited around for Mickey-shaped pretzels and took rest breaks. A part of me longed to be held by them. I wanted their reassurance that they still would love me even if I was gay. I held on to them because they didn’t know yet and at least I had them now. They reminded me of how isolated I felt, a disconnect that weakened me.

As we posed with Pooh and Tigger in Santa hats, I smiled for the camera so when we looked back at the photos, no one would detect the pain burrowed in me. I avoided my phone while we were at the parks but once we got back to the hotel, I stared blankly at the screen, at the missed calls from Elena, at the text messages from Gloria saying she missed me. I didn’t dare call either of them while I was in the room with my family and risk them overhearing my conversations. I texted Gloria that I missed her too, told her and Elena that I couldn’t talk because I was with my family and put my phone on silent.

The next day we were in Critter Country and passing by Splash Mountain, a ride I really wanted to get on. Even though we were in Southern California, it was still chilly enough to wear a sweater in December. Yvette and J.J. were skeptical about getting on Splash Mountain because they didn’t want to get wet in the cool weather.

“Come on! It’s just a little sprinkle, we won’t get wet,” I coaxed them. Splash Mountain is a Disney staple in all the commercials; I needed to try it.

After seeing that the last log full of people go down the big drop weren’t completely soaked, Yvette agreed to get on the ride with me. When it was finally our turn to hop in a log, I wound up riding in the last seat and my sister sat in the seat in front of me. I was excited as we started off.

The log wound around a narrow track of water and clicked up over a hill and down a small drop. We headed inside a cave full of singing animatronic rabbits, frogs, foxes, and bears which comes in second after the It’s a Small World ride for creepiest performance by inanimate objects. The singing critters told a story I didn’t quite understand as we continued through the water. In the dark cave, the critters were cheery until a conflict in the story arose. The log took several fast turns and then a sudden drop in the dark into a glow-in-the dark, neon, mushroom world with singing birds that was a bit more unsettling.

The log headed into the darkness, towards the theatrical lightening and vultures perched above us as we passed. Click, click, click, the gears turned as we began our ascent. I saw an opening of light up ahead, the darkness fading behind us.

As the log reached the end of the tunnel, I saw the open sky. Here it comes, the 50-foot drop. The end was near and I welcomed it. I was ready.

Click, click. From the top, I saw the crowds in the park and the rushing waters down below. Click, click, and then in a split second, silence as the gears let gravity work. We were over the edge and down, down, down we went. I floated in a thrilling suspension, screaming in delight and terror as I held on to the rail in front of me and not the Minnie ears on my head. As the log collided with the water, a wave hit me in the last seat and soaked my sweater and jeans, leaving me to be a soggy mess for the rest of the day.

Before I knew it, it was over.

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