With love comes sacrifice.

With love comes sacrifice. I know that. I’ve always known that. I saw it when I was younger, with my parents. Small things, though, insignificant most of the time. In fact, I would describe it more as compromise, instead of sacrifice. Sacrifice is when you do something that will make someone else, your partner, in this case, very happy, but yourself not so much. Compromise is what my parents did. Sacrifice is what I did.

But Philippe, what did you sacrifice? Well, I’ll tell you. Hi, my name is Philippe Ruiz, and sacrificed my life for love.

No, I didn’t die. I just moved. Yes, really, that’s it. I moved with the girl of my dreams to the place of our dreams. That’s what she thinks, anyway. I hate it here. I thought it didn’t matter where I lived, as long as I was with her, I would be fine. Except, I didn’t think that. I wanted to think that. I think. I’m not sure what I thought back then. Maybe I didn’t think? But I did, I thought about her. But why didn’t I think about me? And now I’m thinking about thinking so much, ‘thinking’ doesn’t even seem like a word any more. Thinking. Think-ing. Thoughts.

We met when I was seventeen years old, she was sixteen. She had just moved into the neighbourhood, and ended up in my class. I remember how nervous she looked. And I remember realising I had never seen a girl as beautiful as her.

‘Hello, my name is Sarah Hudson, I just moved here this summer.’ That’s the first thing I’d hear her say. And then ‘Hi, are you Philippe? Mrs. Williams told me to sit next to you.’ And my stupid seventeen year old boy brain panicked, so the first thing she’d ever hear me say was ‘Yes. Philippe. That’s me. Hi. I’m Philippe. Ruiz. Philippe Ruiz.’ She smiled, I turned red. Six months later we started dating.

Now, ten years later, I can confidently say that Sarah Christina Hudson, or Sadie, as everyone calls her, born on the twelfth of September 1996, daughter to Marie Hudson and Carl Hudson and big sister to Michael Hudson, is the love of my life. I have to admit, no one really believed we would last, as we didn’t really have anything in common. Sadie was born in America, as were her parents, and I was born in Brazil, as were my parents. She was smart and popular, I was more likely to be found in the corner of a library, struggling to get a C. My family wasn’t poor, but we didn’t live in a house with two stories and a white picket fence either. She did. Our mothers both loved Jesus, though, so we had that going for us, at least.

But then we did last. We lasted through high school, and then college, and we lasted through our first year of living together. She became a pre-school teacher and I found a job at a car repair shop. Turns out I really know my way around a car, which is awesome. And things were good. Like, really good.

Then sometime last year we started talking. Do we want kids? (yes). How many? (three). When? (I mean, soon would be good right?). Do we want to stay in this apartment?

‘Yes.’ was my answer. She didn’t answer. ‘You don’t want to stay here?’ I asked. She scrunched her nose. ‘I don’t know Phil. I mean, we want kids, right? And soon would be good, we agreed on that. So,’ she looked around the room. ‘Do you think it will fit, here? Three kids, plus us, plus Gabrielle?’ I put my hand on my chest and gasped. ‘Did you just call Gabrielle fat?’ she chuckled. ‘It’s a cat Phil, I’m sure she doesn’t mind. And she is fat. No, don’t look at me like that, she’s fat and you know it. You feed her too much!’ she ignored my protest and picked up Gabrielle to cuddle with her. Gabrielle started purring immediately, not knowing the foul things the woman cuddling her had just said.

‘Let’s just be realistic, Phil. Three kids isn’t going to fit here.’ Right. The apartment. ‘Yeah, no, I know. Maybe we should sit down with the bank, see what we can afford? I mean, I’m sure there are a lot of apartments bigger than this that would be in our budget, right? Maybe with a small loan.’ She didn’t look up. ‘Sadie?’ Why was she acting so weird? ‘Is something wrong?’ I took her hand. ‘No.’ I raised my eyebrow. Suddenly she sat up and looked my right in my eyes. ‘It’s just, and hear me out, okay? I just think that maybe it would be better to just live in a normal house, you know. With like a garden for the kids to play in, and-’ I cut her of. ‘A normal house, Sadie? Seriously?’ that stung, considering the fact that I grew up in an apartment like this. This was normal. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t mean it like that.’ she put the cat down and moved closer to me on the couch. ‘Philippe, I just… I had a really good time growing up in a house and I just miss things like not being able to hear the neighbours fight, or playing in the garden, or sitting on a balcony without the stench of weed, Philippe we can’t raise a kid in a neighbourhood that smells like weed!’ and I knew she was right, deep down. Plus, with love comes compromise, right? So I said; ‘Sure. Yeah, okay. We can take a look.’

Which brings us to the present. And the present is Sadie and I living in a white house with a garden and a white picket fence. Sadie loves it. I hate it. I’ve tried to talk to her, but I don’t really get much further than ‘I don’t know babe, these people are just not really… you know, my kind of people.’ they are white, if you didn’t get that. But so is Sadie, so she usually comes with ‘Just give them a chance, Phil. Maisy and Connor invited us to their barbecue tonight. We could go, get to know them a little. It’ll be fine.’

And I tried, I really did. But then Connor calls me things like ‘buddy’ and asks me when we are going to start our own ‘familia’. And I know it’s not, like, racist. It’s just a bunch of white people who’ve never lived next to anything else than other white people, and treat everyone like they are white people. But I’m not, you know, a white person. But Sadie is, and I’m doing this for her. Compromise, Philippe. Compromise.

Little did I know that my ‘compromises’ would be the thing that ruined everything later on. Because even though we did last all those years, at one point, things got bad. Like, really bad.

Because. I. Hate. It. Here.

And Sadie loves it.