A Memoir

Every adult was 17 for a year of their life. We all understand the weird transition between teenage years and adulthood: the peak of high school parties, the hookup culture, the strong inclination to feeling embarrassed, the insecurities, the dumb decisions. Not everyone fell in love at 17 though, but I did. 

By the time I was 17, I had been a dancer for 14 years of my life. Due to this, I was the most type-A perfectionist that one could imagine. This included everything from my grades in school to the way I looked. Despite the extremist way that I valued my appearance and actions, I had never truly thought that I was good enough. I had stared at myself in the mirror every day at dance during my peak years of puberty, so I had terrible body dysmorphia and a skewed perception of myself in general. I had never felt pretty enough or perfect enough for anything in my life. Although I didn’t think I was pretty, I appreciated validation from boys my age throughout that past year of my life. I loved receiving compliments from them on social media, so I had been texting a lot of boys at this time. However, I had yet to have a boyfriend.

 One day, this boy added me on Snapchat, a popular social media app for the high school demographic. Let’s call him Cereal (you’ll understand why later). I had never heard of this boy before, and I had no clue what he looked like, except that his Bitmoji (a cartoon avatar on Snapchat) was blonde. I was feeling  “bold” one day, so I responded to Cereal’s story with “Which one are you?”. My sister and I waited with fainted breath as we waited for his response. He responded “the one with the red hat” and we began to scream like little girls seeing Justin Bieber in concert. She clearly approved. After sending Snapchats back and forth for a bit, he asked me out on a date. Only having been on a few dates at the time, consequently, I was out of my mind nervous. The night of the date, I put on my favorite, light wash high waisted jeans that sucked my waist in and a black and tan bandana that I converted into a top (teenage modesty, am I right?). I straightened my hair because this is what I did on special occasions, and a first date was definitely one of those occasions. I walked down the stairs smelling of burnt hair and nerves. My heart began to race as I waited by my front door for 15 minutes before he arrived. After nervously blabbing to my sisters, I finally got the “I’m here” text. I then jumped and jittered about for a few seconds, said goodbye to my family, and walked out the front door like a bird fleeing the nest. 

As I opened the door to his white and clearly aged BMW, we both greeted each other with a shaky “Hi”. As I closed the door, my fingers felt sticky from the door handle. The rubber had burnt off of the handle of the aged car, and it left a sticky residue on my fingers. Despite this, I examined my date to see a cute blonde boy with fluffy hair and a baby face. After looking away with the hopes of him not noticing that I was staring at him, we were off. Cereal took me to Handels, an ice cream shop in our area. We both got milkshakes. The sweetness of the milkshake reflected his sweet smile as we spoke about mundane things like where we both went to school and what our favorite ice cream flavor was. Our conversations were surface-level, as they should be on a first date. He then took me to In’N’Out to get fries, a date night classic for California teens. We ate in his car, chatted, and laughed as the ocean to our right sparkled in the moonlight. I was having a great time. I’d imagine the car smelled like fast food, but I must have blocked out the scent because of how much I was enjoying myself. I felt myself blush a few times during our conversation. After chatting for a while, Cereal drove me home. When he got back to my house to drop me off, he awkwardly gave me a hug across his center console. I remember thinking about how awkward that was, but either way, I walked inside and decided that I liked this boy. I didn’t get that “love at first sight” feeling, but I’d also never been in love before so I didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t. I’m not sure if it was the greasy fries or the fattening milkshake, but clearly the processed foods got to my head and convinced me that we would be compatible. We went on a few more dates within the month. On March 20th 2021, Cereal kissed me and asked me to be his girlfriend, to which I replied “Sure!”.

At first, it felt like a fairytale. I felt as though I was transported to a high school romance movie. We made so many fun memories together. We loved going on sushi dates, going to football games, and going to parties together. Although, some of my favorite memories were made when we would just sit in my room talking, dancing, and laughing for hours. We created so many inside jokes during these hangouts. My favorite was something we called “seeing eye-to-eye”, where we would press our eyes so close together that our eyeballs were nearly touching. Our widened eyes staring back at each other would make us laugh until we cried. As cheesy as it sounds, 17 year old Reese ate it up. Our relationship was childish in energy yet mature in function, as we laughed like little kids together but our communication skills were superb; Any time something was bothering us, we would talk it out until we came to a solution. We would miss each other after not seeing each other for a day, and even when we didn’t see each other, we would text constantly. We would send photos of our meals, text about what we did throughout the day, and send “good morning” texts as soon as we woke up and “good night” texts as soon as we went to bed. Our love felt like a warm cup of coffee on a chilly Sunday morning. The first year of our relationship continued like this. Cereal felt like my safe space. I loved him with every fiber of my being. I had never loved anyone like I loved him. I loved him when he was happy, when he was sad, and when I didn’t even love myself (which was all of the time). When I was with him, I was my happiest. I was so young with such mature emotions towards him, and I will never forget how surreal that felt. We went through an entire year in which when we were together, everything was perfect. We never withheld anything from each other…or so I thought.

Cereal played baseball all throughout high school, and was very passionate about it. I used to sit at his baseball games for hours. If I reminisce hard enough, I can still feel the shoulder sunburns and my legs sticking to the staticky seat. Baseball bored me, but I went because I loved him and wanted to support him. Luckily, some of his teammates also had girlfriends, and I would sit with them at every game. At those baseball games, I met some of my best friends to this day. In May of 2022 (two months after Cereal and I’s one year anniversary), I drove two of my friends an hour away from our hometown to go see our boyfriends’ baseball game. We stopped at Starbucks on the way, and were so excited to go support our boyfriends! After getting our coffees, we got back into my Jeep. As I took a sip of my bitter coffee in the driver's seat of my car, I opened my phone only for every single bone in my body to feel bitter. Even as I think back to this moment three years later, I still have a pit in my stomach. I got a notification of an Instagram DM from a girl also named Reese. If you know anything about the stereotypical “Hey girlie” message of this generation, then you know the severity of this situation. Reese had messaged me to tell me that Cereal had been contacting her for months, and that they had hooked up the month of our one year anniversary. This meant that Cereal had cheated on me. She sent me screenshots as proof of their messages which confirmed that he had been reaching out to the other Reese since October 2021. I was in shock. I told my girlfriends immediately, and they felt terrible for me. I was halfway to my boyfriend’s baseball game to support him, only to find out that he was emotionally and physically cheating on me during our entire relationship with someone with the SAME NAME as me! I was at a loss for words. I felt my world crumbling around me as the taste of salty tears filled my mouth. The relationship he showed me was perfect, but what he did behind closed doors was far from perfect.

I had never felt this defeated before. My poor little 18 year old heart was throbbing in pain as I imagined my very first boyfriend with another girl. All I could picture was Cereal texting this girl from his bedroom while I was probably at dance class or with my friends. At this point in my life, this was the most betrayal I had ever felt, and I really did feel taken advantage of. I remember feeling my heart beating in double time as I sat in my car after hearing the news. At that moment, I debated driving back home to sit in my sorrows, but my girls convinced me that it’d be best for us to go to his game so that I could break it off in person. I was glad that I didn’t have to go through those emotions alone.

When we arrived at the baseball game, I felt a fire boiling in my chest. I was so enraged and upset that I couldn’t even think. My chest felt hot as if it was lit on fire, and my heart ached through it all. After we sat down on the bleachers, my friends helped me decide on what I was going to say to Cereal after the game ended. After the longest seven innings I’d ever sat through, it finally ended. My hands began to shake as my heart raced in anticipation of seeing him and speaking to him after knowing he betrayed me. When I saw him, his smile was so big. He clearly didn’t know that I had found out what he did. To be honest, I think he thought that I’d never find out, and he was probably just happy that his girlfriend came to support him at his baseball game. Despite being so hurt by him, I hugged him out of habit. He then asked “how are you?” to which I replied “not good, I know what you did”. Confused at first, he asked what I meant. I told him everything that Reese had told me. His face dropped as if he had seen a ghost. Tears began to fill my eyes after vocally recounting what he had done to me. Every detail I told him made the hole in my heart grow larger. It was obvious that all he wanted to do was to talk about it and explain himself, and I denied him at every request. I told him I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, and I walked away while he walked to the bus to ride back with his team. My friends found me, hugged me, and told me how proud they were of me. Cereal had not stopped texting me since I broke things off with him, begging me to allow him to talk to me. I told him that maybe when I got home, I’d be willing to speak to him. This was my first mistake. I couldn’t decide if I was more hurt or angry, but either way, I drove my friends and I home safely. 

Looking back, he really did show signs that he had cheated. I actually had asked him if he had cheated on me a month or so before I found out that he had. I had no reason to believe he cheated. My gut knew before I did. He denied it of course, as I had no proof. I trusted him, so I believed him. However, I’ll never forget this one night that he came to my house during the first year of our relationship. My room was dimly lit with the TV on in the background. Out of nowhere, Cereal told me that he couldn’t breathe. He started pacing around my room, complaining of a tight chest. He thought he needed to go to the doctors. He was uncontrollable. We called his parents as he had a panic attack. Neither of us understood that he was having a panic attack until he caused me to have several later down the road. He called his parents, expressing his desire to go to the hospital. His parents told him to come home so they could discuss before making any rash decisions. I drove him home without saying a word as he cried. I tried to comfort him but he wouldn’t budge. I dropped him off and on my ride home, my eyes welled with tears. I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see the road. I hated to see someone that I loved so much in so much pain, so I couldn’t help but cry. I felt all of the pain he was expressing. I was hysterical. After collecting myself, I drove home in shock from the entire situation. I later realized that the panic attack was probably caused by the string of lies that he was feeding to me. 

When I got back to my house after finding out that I got cheated on, Cereal showed up soon after. He came inside, and my mom grabbed his arm and yelled “this is the last time you’ll be allowed in my house again”, as she knew that this dumb boy had destroyed her little girl. He ran upstairs, got on his knees, and began bawling at me. At this time, I felt bombarded by his hysterics. I was so hurt and was shocked that he was the one crying. All he could say to me was that he was sorry and that he wished he didn’t do what he did. I had never had a boyfriend before him, let alone experienced heartbreak and betrayal. I had no clue what was normal and what wasn’t. I loved this boy with every part of me, and he was my safe space. I couldn’t imagine what life would look like without him. I hated myself without him. I had learned to love him before I learned to love myself. 

After crying for three days straight, I made the biggest mistake that I’ve ever made in my entire life: I took him back. I have always been a forgiving, empathetic, and understanding girl, and I saw the good in him. I took a step back from the situation and chose to see this incident as a mistake that he made as a young boy. I trusted that he wouldn’t make the same mistake again, and was convinced that he would have to be on a different level of sociopathic to put me through this again. Not to brag, but I was basically the perfect girlfriend: I was selfless and loving, I gave him space, I never stopped him from seeing his friends, and I went out of my way to do thoughtful things for him. My only flaw was how insecure I was. I was willing to cope with the hole in my heart in order to stay by his side. In fact, I had coped without loving myself for 17 years of my life, so what was a lifetime more? I was young, I hated myself, and I clearly didn’t respect myself. Although I had never managed to spare any love for myself, I always had so much love for everyone else in my life. I always put others before myself growing up, that’s just who I am. Looking back at that moment, I really wish I put myself first, took a step back, and understood the saying “once a cheater, always a cheater”. 

After a few months of trying to rebuild what I had with Cereal, it was September of 2022 and I was off to college. Cereal ended up getting contacted by the coach of the SBCC baseball team, asking him to join the team. Knowing that I was going to UCSB, he kindly accepted the offer. This made me so happy because I knew that I would feel way less worried about him betraying me when we weren’t having to be in a long-distance relationship. My best friend Haley, who was there with me when I found out I got cheated on, was going to UCSB too. Her boyfriend who played baseball with Cereal in high school also got an offer, and he decided to live with Cereal. I was over-the-moon to be at school with my best friend and the love of my life at the time. I pictured us watching the sunset on the beach together, going to parties together, and continuing to grow up together. I thought it would heal my trust in him and strengthen our relationship. At the beginning of our freshman year, I had even begun to start the process of forgiveness so that I could romanticize my life while I was in college. All of my hopes and dreams that I had about our relationship in college never came to fruition. Instead, he began to act strange. He would go hours without texting me when he was desperate to see me all summer. He wasn’t attentive, didn’t take me out on many dates, and was no longer my safe space. That’s when I began to have panic attacks, just like the one he had in high school. He comforted me through several panic attacks without understanding that he was the cause of them.

We began getting into a lot more arguments than we used to. We had seldom argued prior to moving to college (other than our breakup). However, as soon as we got to college together, I began feeling so insecure about our relationship that my conversations with him would often turn into arguments. He would stress me out and make me feel so badly during these arguments, to a point where I couldn’t breath. I’d be crying so hard that I’d begin to lose my breath and my vision. Throughout these episodes I couldn’t think, I couldn’t stop crying, my lips would be numb, and my hands would shake. I would be stuck in this state of panic. These panic attacks were so debilitating and so frequent that Cereal had learned how to get me out of them. After pacing around the room and angrily spiraling for a bit, he would always hold me in his arms and talk me through a breathing exercise. I now understand that this isn’t normal nor healthy. Back then, despite these events, I thought our relationship was mostly good.

In February of 2023, we both went to a party together. I was in a bikini, the sun was shining, and I was so happy to be partying with my boyfriend and my best friends. The entirety of the party, he acted strange. I wanted to take photos with him, but he wouldn’t smile for any of the photos and he looked miserable. Ignoring his behavior, I tried to have a good time with my friends. After being at the party for a couple hours, my friends and I decided to leave with Haley’s boyfriend and his friends. I told Cereal that we were leaving to go get food and he expressed that he wanted to stay at the party. All of his friends were going to leave with us, so he would be there with no one but him and a bunch of other girls in bikinis. I imagined all he wanted to do was talk to half-naked girls, and I knew he was capable of cheating again. I was uncomfortable with this, so as a young adult with narrow patience, I flipped him off as I walked out of the party. Infuriated, he followed me out. Cereal began to yell at me on our walk out, embarrassing me to my core. He screamed “WHY WOULD YOU FLIP ME OFF IN FRONT OF MY FRIENDS?! I DID NOTHING WRONG! I JUST WANTED TO STAY AT THE PARTY!”. Frustrated and hurt by the way he spoke to me and his suspicious intentions, I told him that I could not converse with him about this anymore, let alone in public, and that I would like to break up. Pissed off, he walked home alone. I wonder if he was more upset by not being able to stay at the party with the other girls or by the fact that his girlfriend just broke up with him. 

Three weeks had gone by, and he had yet to say a word to me. Meanwhile, those three weeks were the worst three weeks of my college life thus far. I was very close with Cereal’s mom after our 22 months of dating. She called me every day for a few days after we broke up. She cried to me over the phone, saying “I’m so sorry he did this to you! I don’t know what’s wrong with him! You didn’t deserve any of this! I don’t know where I went wrong!”. This had made me feel like I wasn’t alone but despite this, I had gone through every stage of grief; I had cried, slept, and journaled every day, but I also began to love myself. After lots of self-reflection, I deemed myself a much better person than him: I was forgiving, I was kind, I was selfless. Even his mom agreed. I truly didn’t see Cereal coming back into my life at this point.

 However, after three weeks of no contact, I heard from Cereal. The way he perceived the breakup was much different from my interpretation, so I decided to meet up with him thinking I’d gain some closure. After all of the work I put into bettering myself over those past three weeks of no contact, I believe meeting up with him truly set me back. Our conversation didn’t give me any closure. Instead, it made me even more confused. We met to talk multiple times after that, and each time, he cried in my arms as I sat there with a blank expression on my face. I felt nothing. I had already processed and reflected on everything and was more than happy by myself at this point. He hasn't processed the breakup until then. Somehow, I felt bad for him when I should've felt worse for myself. He reminded me that I still didn’t love myself enough to put myself first, so I decided to start dating him again in March of 2023…third time’s a charm, I guess! I’m still not sure what was going through my head in this phase of my life, but I’m sure of one thing: I respected our love more than I did myself.

We dated for two more years after that. Those last two years of our relationship had their ups and downs like most relationships do, but it was generally good. There was a point where I really did see a shift in him. It really did feel like things were looking up. He began to get more attentive than he usually was, he put in more effort, and he seemed to be much happier. As our relationship progressed and as I turned 21 in November of 2024, I really did see marriage as an option down the line. We had gone through so much together, and had grown into adults together. Although I never fully trusted him after his dishonesty, I was excited at the idea of marrying my high school sweetheart. I was hopeful that the worst days were behind me. However, on January 19th of 2025, I began texting him about how sad I was. I was in a terrible mental space, as I had school from 9-5 every day, dance rehearsals at night, and attended to his daily “I’m so tired” texts after he didn’t leave his bed all day. I was miserable. I hated that I had put up with his shenanigans for so long, I hated how exhausted I was, and worst of all, I hated myself. After all of those years spent healing my relationship with him, I had never healed my relationship with myself. Out of the blue in between our texts, he wrote “I haven’t been happy with our relationship”. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”, I said to myself. I began to feel nauseous. When things got hard, he gave up like it was nothing when I had sacrificed everything to stay with him. This told me everything I needed to know, and I was slightly relieved. We met up, discussed, and broke up that night. Just like that, three years and ten months with him went down the drain, and I was still circling the drain waiting for my future self to pick me up.

We are finally done for good. Two weeks after we broke up, my friend told me that she saw him on Hinge, and sent me his page. Apparently he’s looking for a “dog mom”, even though he told me he doesn’t want a relationship for a while. It’s honestly laughable. I also heard that he cheated on me at least one other time after the first time which, although it doesn’t surprise me, it still doesn’t sit right with me. 

I often wonder what went through his head through our relationship. I would love to have his brain for a day just so I could understand why he is the way he is. None of what he did to me are things I’d do to anyone else. He hurt me insufferably and took advantage of my character. After lots of overthinking and nights laying awake in bed, I’ve decided to diagnose him as being either a clinical narcissistic or a sociopath as there’s no other way for me to justify or understand his actions. I can’t understand him no matter how hard I try, and I take that as a compliment to my morals.

I should have known that this was the real him while I was with him. When I looked at him, I really did think he was a good person who made bad decisions. I thought he deserved forgiveness, as no one is perfect. I wasn’t even the best girlfriend at times, but looking back and considering all that I put myself through, I was as good as I could have been. Despite the fact that I thought he had merely made mistakes, I now understand that the frequency of those mistakes now define him as a person. I gave so much love to someone who was undeserving when I could have given it to myself instead. I committed way too much of myself to the Cereal Project, when a broken and unfinished project was being suppressed within myself all of those years.

I had put him before myself for years. Through the struggles of our relationship, I chose to donate plasma just to afford his Christmas present one year. I knew that I had low blood pressure, but I chose to donate anyway because I cared so much about making him happy. About ten to fifteen minutes into the plasma donation, I had gotten so pale and faint that the doctors had to take me off of the pump. I started losing my vision and losing feeling in my limbs. Cereal was known to impair my senses in both a physical and mental sense. I had poured so much of myself into him that I put myself in danger, and I didn’t love myself enough to care. I (quite literally) risked my life for him. This boy had cheated on me, and I had still managed to give actual bits of my heart to him. 

 Although I often think that I wasted almost four years of my life, I continue to remind myself that everything happens for a reason; I now know exactly what I don’t want out of a relationship, and I finally love myself. I love my kindness, my inclination to love, my positivity, and my sparkle that I hid away for so long. I’m still very empathetic and selfless and I value that in myself, but I now show myself just as much love as I show to others. Colors are brighter now, my relationship with my friends is stronger than ever, and I even began strengthening my relationship with God. I often think back on those years of my life and wonder why I stayed for so long. It took me almost four years to realize that not only was I getting cheated on by someone else, but I was cheating myself by loving someone who didn’t deserve it more than myself. If it took years of my adolescence to realize that the most important relationship I could have was with myself, then I’m grateful that I now have my entire adult life to prove to myself how much I love her.

I rarely see Cereal in public now, and I believe it’s because we’re on complete opposite paths in life. As long as I continue to love myself and better myself, we’ll never cross paths again. I know that I won’t even run into him at the grocery store because I fuel my body with healthy foods because I love myself, and he fills his body with cereal. By the way, I called him “Cereal” for two reasons: His favorite food is cereal, and he’s a serial cheater.