Carl Xiao

              I arrived in Seattle, US for the first time on August 23rd, 2015. With 800 dollars cash in my pocket, I dragged my two huge suitcases and moved into Lander Hall. The freshman year was a year with a lot of changes in my mind and behavior. I started working out in the gym at a regular basis because of the convenient and nice gym facilities and most importantly, I didn’t have much to do in my spare time. For two reasons, I was 19 years old which was not allowed to drink, go to a bar or a night club. I didn’t know how to have fun in the US because the life in China was completely different and everything became unavailable such as going to massage, internet Café, or Karaoke, etc. There were not as many late-night restaurants as my hometown had. So, in my spare time, I would just hang out with friends in only three places: dorm, gym, and Odegaard library. Thinking back that period of time, it was really tough for a Chinese kid who grew up on the streets in China to adapt the environment in the US. But that was not the most difficult part for me.

              Being away from home was actually not difficult to me at all because I’ve had many experiences living alone away from my home when I was younger. But I was dating someone from my high school who I loved so much to the extent that I could give up everything for her. We were having a great relationship before I was admitted by the University of Washington and we were hoping to get admitted by the same school in the US. Unfortunately, I got an offer from UW which was my “dream” school and I didn’t really expect I would be accepted. I remember that day I received the offer and I felt so bittersweet. I’ve struggled for over a month until two days before the deadline to pay a deposit to UW. I kept looking for excuses and told my parents that I didn’t want to go to UW anymore because of “bad weather in Seattle”, “Seattle being a new untypical American city and I wanted to go to an older American city”, “expensive housing”, etc. But the fact was I didn’t really hate UW or Seattle at all. I made myself think of that way only because I wanted to go to same school with my ex-girlfriend and she didn’t even apply UW. After made the 500 dollars deposit to UW, me and my ex-girlfriend’s relationship changed, and I couldn’t find any reason for that broken relationship because it seemed like no one made any mistakes or whatever. It was just because we had to accept the fact that we needed to be separated for four years and the dream of going to same school collapsed. I still remember the heartbroken feeling after I made the decision and how the relationship changed. But we both have made to hide our sad feelings and convinced ourselves that it would be fine. My ex-girlfriend went to Colorado State University and her school started earlier than UW. I remember I sent her to the airport, and we cried just like we were going to lose each other. Everything were actually fine for the first few days until I came to UW. She started to feel insecure about our relationship, and she tried to feel better by hanging out with Chinese friends she just met over there. I felt her changed altitude about our relationship which made me start feeling insecure as well. I started to check on her all the time. But the more I tried to talk to her, the more inpatient she became. And thinking back then, I realize by that time, we didn’t love each other in a real way anymore. Instead, we just tried to use the excuse of loving each other and wanted to control each other. Less than a week after I started my EFS (Early Fall Start) Program, I flied to Colorado to see her without telling her in advance. I found out on her phone and saw she had been chatting with a guy every day after she told me she went to bed and I could tell she had a good relationship with that guy. I was so pissed, and I punched the door and her bed frame in her dorm room and shouted at her until two police knocked on the door and put me on the wall. I was grilled by one black police office outside of her room. She was crying and talking to another police office at the same time. I was brought downstairs and sat on the back of a police car for the first time in the US. I had never imagined I would be sitting in that car. I felt desperate and hopeless. I didn’t even know where I was supposed to go because the police officer warned me not to contact my ex-girlfriend in any form actively and enter the campus again. I received the text from her “I can’t believe that was how we meet each other for the first time in the US and I would never ever see you again”. How heartbroken was that? Devastating.