To the outside world, I appeared to be the girl in love with the “perfect” boyfriend; little did they know the thoughts swimming behind the scene they all saw. The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by Ernest Hemingway that has been read for generations, the cause of its success is it’s compelling story about a man who struggles with a task (catching a great marlin), once he has caught the marlin, there are sharks who eat at it – devouring his trophy and diminishing the mission he accomplished. Many readers can relate to this story, because in our everyday lives we form aspirations we wish to accomplish and obstacles that attempt to keep us from pursuing our dreams. My dream was to escape the claustrophobically “perfect” relationship I had, to make a few mistakes and grow as a person.

There is a proverb that states, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” Many people would disagree with this, but I am a firm believer. A steady relationship lasting two years seemed to be something girls my age dreamed about, I was living this dream and hated it. My relationship with Brandon was perfect, and to talk bad about him would be unthinkable – but this was his flaw: he was perfect. He always made little notions without me asking, he did at the drop of a dime and he would go to ridiculous extents to make me happy, extents that I knew I would never go to in return. I loved Brandon, but the perfection became overwhelming. It was the countless nights of Brandon talking to my parents for hours in our living room, the way my brother and him would play games together, the way his parents and nephew interrogated Brandon the few Sundays I wasn’t present – the relationship was more than just the two of us, both of our families were involved, this all made it so much more difficult to walk away. Just as in The Old Man and the Sea, I had an aspiration – freedom. Most thought I was crazy for walking away from something so flawless but I wanted to know what it was like to have something go wrong in my life, and Brandon made it too effortless to do that. The sharks in the novel were also present in my situation; my family, his family, and the ease that he brought to my life were all the sharks swimming around me while I contemplated my decision.