What You Mean to Me

Beads of sweat rolled down my tightly toned tummy as my hips moved in circles, my body swayed sexily, flipping my hair. I moved around the pole, spinning around it once, before breaking away from it and walking forward to where a chair had been set up for me. I slid into it, kicking my leg into the air for a fan kick, my second leg following in suite, crossing my legs of the other side.

I stood, spinning the chair around, dancing around it to the chorography with the other girls in my dance class, to the Pussycat Doll's "Don't Cha". I slunk down onto the ground, crawling forward a bit with four other girls on all fours, before finishing up the final steps as the music cut.

"Good job everyone, good job!" Our director clapped. "That was great… now away from the burlesque style, let's give our hip-hop number a go, then we'll call it a day."

We all got in our appropriate positions, then the song "Live Your Life" by T.I. and Rihanna started, signaling our next dance.

I moved to the music, feeling as if I were free. Dancing did this to me, made me feel so incredibly happy, like I could forget the world and all the problems in it. For a few moments I could escape the tortures of my everyday life, and just be anyone I wanted, with nothing holding me back-- like I was invincible, like I was actually worth something.

I wasn't the smartest person in the world. I was an average student, making B's and C's, but nothing like your four-point-oh GPA student who would someday be valedictorian. No way. I didn't have the brains for that. I was more of an artsy person, rather than academic, gifted in creativity. I was an amazing dancer, a decent artist, an exceptional photographer, a adequate musician, competent singer, and I had a talent for language, speaking English, French, and Spanish, and am close to being fluent in Portuguese.

Some wonder how I can only be an average student and yet be able to speak three languages, and I can't really explain it. I guess I just love languages, and growing up with parents speaking French, Spanish and English, well, you pick up fast.

My father was an American cardiologist, who met my mother in France where he was studying at the University in Paris. My mother had grown up in Spain, and was studying art after living so close to the aqueducts all her life. And according to the two of them, it was love at first sight when they met in the City of Lights.

I've heard their story so many times, it used to be my favorite bedtime story as a child. My mother was sitting at a small outdoor café, studying some sketches she had been working on all day of the Eiffel Tower that was right before her. She decided that she should leave, since the sun was starting to set; it was getting late, and she had to meet with her professor that evening, as well as having a busy day tomorrow, going to sketch Notre Dame.

She paid the bill, and standing up, her eyes fell on 'the most exquisite being she had ever seen', as she had put it. My father. He was sitting not too far away, on the other end of the café, and he had looked up at that very moment as well, as fate would have had it. They gazed at one another from across the way, and the rest, well, that's history.

My mother and father had their love story. A perfect love story, in my opinion. They were soul mates as far as anyone could see, matching each other perfectly. Their love was so deep, so pure, so real, something you only read about in fairytale endings.

But their story doesn't have a fairytale ending. Four years back, we lost my father. It was the middle of the night, and he was being called in, needing to go to the hospital because a patient was going into cardiac arrest. The woman ended up dying, and there was nothing my father could have done to save her. I know that-- my father would never have let someone die if he could have prevent it. He took his job so seriously, wanting to help everyone.

But the patient's husband didn't feel the same. He was suffering from some type of mental condition, schizophrenia, I believe, and he blamed my father for his wife's death. He believed that my father had deliberately killed her, to get back at him for some strange reason-- like I said, schizophrenia. But he was so shook up that he brought a gun to the hospital the following day and shot my father right there, in front of everyone, killing him on the spot.

And that was the end of my father's life, the end to our perfect little family. In an instant, my father was snatched away from me and my mother forever. It was hard for me and her both, but my mom kept herself together, for me. But I know it hurt her-- no, it killed her inside. And it killed me too. My father was so important to the both of us, and just loosing him like that was devastating.

But to help me and my mom through this, there was our best friends: Linda and Frank Iero. The Ieros were the family who lived directly across the street from us. When we first moved into the neighborhood, it was the Ieros were the most welcoming to us. I was three when we first moved to Jersey, and when I met Frank, we became instant best friends. Linda and my mother became good friends too, and like friends, we all helped one another. We helped Linda and Frank when their husband/father left, and they helped us when my father passed. It helped, because without Frank's help, I don't think I would have been able to survive the loss of my father.

Frank and I were best friends, like I said, since I moved to Jersey. Our mothers did everything together, therefore, we did everything together. Frank was such an amazing guy: sweet, funny, caring, loving… everything you could ever want in a friend. My father really liked Frank, and considered him like a part of our family. He used to joke around about Frank and I getting married and having our own little kids that would be as crazy as we were.

Of course he would be joking around, we knew that. But my parents taught me everything I know about life, including love. Because of my parents, I believed in true love. If they could find each other, then surely, there was someone out there for me, too. There was a soul mate out there for me. And I have found that person, finally, after all these years. The one person who is perfect for me, in every aspect. And that person is none other than my best friend, Frank Iero.