Sandalwood [an excerpt]

Michael Carbone was my first real love. We had known each other in passing for most of our lives. We had gone to the same Catholic primary school and then the same Catholic high school, although he was four years older than me. Our fathers were friends. Our mothers were friends, too, but not for three days during the annual spring garden festival when they became rivals for the title of ‘Best Garden Over One Acre’. It seemed the festival judges were all in on some sort of peacekeeping mission between the two women, because my mother won in even-numbered years, while Lina Carbone won in odd-numbered years.

When Michael finished high school, he went on to become a locally sought-after personal trainer, and we continued to cross paths at various births, deaths and marriages for the next four years, until I finished high school and moved to Sydney for university and we lost contact.

I was twenty-three years old when we reacquainted ourselves during Christmas and New Year festivities. I had returned to Griffith for a few months between graduating from university and applying for graduate roles in London in preparation for my application to study at Oxford. It was during the same festive season I overheard that unnamed person utter those fateful words: ‘Juliana looks so emaciated these days’.

Emaciated? I didn’t want to look emaciated.

During the next few months, I worked out at the gym four times a week rebuilding my wasted muscles, with Michael as my personal trainer. We soon started dating and dating soon developed into a relationship, albeit a long distance one because in the meantime I had secured an offer at Oxford University and a graduate role in London. We saw each other as often as possible and it functioned for almost six years… well, two years if you deduct the four he decided being unfaithful was justifiable given I was working and studying in another hemisphere.

The worst part was my head had told me to break off our relationship before I moved to London, but my heart said otherwise and I foolishly followed it. What I hadn’t recognised, however, was the barrier I had placed between us, dooming the relationship to fail regardless of Michael’s infidelity.

I can see it know.

At the time, however, I was blind to my destructive attempts at self-preservation.

At the time, Michael argued that I had made myself emotionally unavailable.

At the time, I cried.

At the time, he said he still loved me, it’s just that he didn’t think we should be together anymore.

At the time, I yelled at him.

At the time, he told me he was sorry for hurting me with tears in his eyes.

At the time, I demanded he explain to me how he could do that to someone he still loved.

At the time, he asked me to calm down.

At the time, I told him to fuck off.

At the time, I cursed myself for not following my head, for not paying attention to what my instincts were telling me: that our time together was drawing to an end and our lives were moving in different directions. I told myself if we had broken up earlier it would have been civil. Maybe we could have even stayed friendly.

Due to his indiscretions, however, I had decided to claim the high moral ground as my own and with it the privilege of righteous indignation, even four years later.