Wearing your heart on your sleeve

Last week I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. In retrospect it wasn’t really a nervous breakdown, it was just a prelude to a physical illness – which I should have recognized – combined with a bad case of PMS, but at the time I was freaking out.

Let me explain: it was a Sunday afternoon and I was supposed to head over to a friend’s house to grill. I got up and wasn’t feeling…entirely myself. I felt snippy and cross but chalked it up to not getting enough sleep. I chatted with my friend, made some firm plans, hopped in the shower and then proceeded to get dressed. I wasn’t wild about my outfit so I changed. Then changed again. Then changed again. And on and on until my entire wardrobe was in a pile around my feet and I was holding my sobbing face in my hands.

Not a flattering scene.  I never made it to the BBQ. I climbed back into bed and slept all day. I was sicky, but totally didn’t realize it. Anyway.

Trying on a ton of outfits in the morning has never been my routine. I know some women are like that, but I’m not. While I’m showering I usually mentally flip through my drawers and settle on an outfit. 99% of the time it’s the right outfit. It fits. I put it on and I happily go about my day. 

I realized that I’m totally the same way about dating, and that I’ve never been into, “trying on,” men. I know what is going to suit me and when I see it, I put it on. I don’t slip into one guy for a minute, take a look at myself in the mirror then toss him into the laundry pile. I usually have that mental image of the, “right,” one and know him when I see him. Obviously sometimes that doesn’t work out, but 99% of the time, it’s right, it fits, and I happily go about my relationship.

One of my girl friends from childhood doesn’t like this one bit. Now that I’m single it’s like she’s in overdrive. She’s always asking, “Did you go on a date? Did you meet anyone? Are you looking online? Are you going to just sit there and be single?” Maybe I am lazy. No, strike that, I am DEFINITELY lazy about dating, but I really don’t feel like standing in a pile of discarded men, sobbing and feeling like I’m losing my grip on reality. 

I don’t know what my next guy will look like, but I know he’ll be a perfect fit. That’s enough for me right now. I might go buy a few new dresses in the meantime though because, quite frankly, I have nothing to wear.

Famous Last Words

When I die, if there’s a Hell that's where I'll be going.  I do hope that you have a “sorting” moment at the Pearly Gates before being sent downtown, though, because I have a few things to say to God/Jesus. They are:

• Whoa, I am SO SORRY that I spent so much time wondering whether or not you were real. That is awkward for me. You have a nice place here. Very modern with the white and stuff. The Kardashians would love this…wait, how have you never heard of them, they’re like OMNIPRESENT down there. 
• You’re cool with everyone, not just straight people, right? OK, that’s what I thought. 
• Good job with helping humanity engineer yellow watermelon. Thumbs up to all juicy fruits, actually. Well done.
• Tell my Grandma I said, ‘Hi!’
• Do you know where my senior yearbook went? It cost me, like, $40 in Earth money and that is equivalent to…probably a lot of Heaven money. So I’m sure you can understand my concern. 
•  They say that hell is hot and all, but my idea of hell is being braless in a cold room with a scratchy top on. Ohhhhhh they have that, too? Dang.

Lover lover

One of my more embarrassing hobbies is following (OK, obsessing over) famous relationships. Many a conversation has started with me saying, “You’re going to die when you find out who he’s married to…” I know, I know, it’s kind of a waste of time and usually pretty depressing as hobbies go, but it floats my boat to think of celebrities as real people. I WANT them to be real people, and the act of falling in love humanizes them in my eyes. It makes me fantasize about the banalities of their lives (What does Brangelina have for breakfast?) Plus there are so many wack-tacular pairings that make you think. I like when something makes me go, “Hmmm.” 

Like the fact that Shmoopy is married to George Stephanopolous. How does that even happen (actually I kind of know how it happened, because Ali Wentworth apparently grew up in Washington DC. So she probably impressed G-Steph with her political prowess. Or he loved In Living Color. What the hell do I know?)

Or Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg. This one really gets me excited, because Joanna is my patron saint. She comes across as very scholarly and very much an anachronism. There’s a primness about her, and I like to think of her sitting around with Samberg and the Lonely Islands crew while they write modern classics “Dick in a Box.” I wonder if she’s ever picked out the melody for “Mother Lover” on her harp. 

See, isn’t this a fun game? 

And these are just current couples. Dig into the archives for head-scratchers such as Will Arnett and Penelope Ann Miller. (WHAT? I don’t get it.)

Honorable mention, of course, goes to the crazy awesome couple pictured. I don't know how Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally got together but I'd like to thank THE UNIVERSE for that.

Real Talk

It’s weird what sticks with you. When I was pretty young (say nine or ten-ish) my next door neighbors, who were like surrogate grandparents to us, gave me a book about hygeine, comportment and femininity for girls. Who the heck knows where it came from, because their daughter was already grown and having sons of her own, but it seemed to be some sort of hand-me-down. Teen Girl Talk (the great site awfullibrarybooks.com has a feature on it, here http://awfullibrarybooks.net/?p=7499) was filled with all sorts of frightening tips.  At the time, I remember thinking it was already pretty out-dated*, and I’ve never been the girliest-girl in the world, but for some reason I lived and died by its advice. 

I tried the 1000 calorie per day diet plan (great for growing kids!) and did the ankle exercises until they were throbbing (and still chubby.)  I even kept my eyes open when washing my face because, “eyes need washing, too.” But what I remember most is its recommendations on body measurements, and how you should be able to fit your hands around your waist. Is anyone actually able to do this? Make a circle with the fingers of both hands in front of you right now. Does that look like the circumference of a healthy waist? No. Maybe back when whalebones were a popular fashion accessory, but certainly not now. Lord knows I couldn’t do it at age 10 and I couldn’t do it at age 20 when I started working out and dieting like a madwoman. Is that not insane? Even as an adult I catch myself wrapping my fingers around my waist trying to gauge just how long my damn fingers would need to be to reach each other. Even though I know – and knew as a kid – that it’s a completely unrealistic goal. 

There’s not much of a point to this, except to say that we spend our adult lives trying to get out from under the negative things we learned and experienced as kids. If I have a female child in the future I’ll make sure to tell her that her waist is great just the way it is and that eyeballs don’t need washing.

*Further research has uncovered that it was published in 1981, but, gosh, it seemed like something from the 30s.

Christmas spirit

I promised to be more cheerful and watching White Christmas always does that for me this time of year. I'm notoriously picky about my Christmas favorites. A Christmas Story? Meh. It's a Wonderful Life? Lies. But I love me some White Christmas.Vera Ellen was my style icon growing up.

Goals

A recent comment (from this post) inspired me to talk a little bit about my post-breakup goals: 

Anonymous said...

If you get lucky enough to snag another guy, stop acting crazy. Don't do drugs, and give a lot of head. You might want to lose a little weight too. Walking a lot will make the depression go away.

While I know this commenter is just being an total asshole, he/she raises some excellent points. I've been working on getting my head on straight and the best way to do that is to set some goals. Spending more time exercising is one of them. Over the past five years I went from vegan to vegetarian to mostly-vegetarian-plus-some-poultry, and it's amazing how the pounds have added up. Really, they're probably mostly cheese pounds. (I went for SIX YEARS without it!) A daily walk or some yoga/Pilates won't just get me back into my size smalls, but will improve my overall mood. I used to be a fanatic about exercising. It's just a matter of getting back into that mindset.

Another important goal on my list is to get more involved. I'd love to start volunteering on a regular basis and now I have the time to do it. So I'm going to make it a New Year's resolution, and start sending out resumes. I'm super excited about this already!

As for not doing drugs and giving more head...you're an asshole, anonymous commenter, but we've already established that. I would absolutely be "lucky" to "snag" another guy. I'd consider myself exceptionally lucky to find love again, and that guy will be exceptionally lucky, too. If you'd like to stop hiding behind the internet and share some more of your kind advice, feel free to email me at leigh.cummings@gmail.com.

Solitaire

This is the first time I’ve ever really lived by myself, which is odd because I’ve always felt like a very independent person. But now I’m realizing that I’m kind of a baby about certain things. In the wee morning hours today, I either woke up and saw a bug on my quilt or DREAMED that I saw a bug on my quilt and shot out of bed like whoa. I spent the next twenty minutes whimpering, shaking my quilt, and wondering if there was ever a bug in the first place. And hating myself for being so easily unsettled. If I had a boyfriend or a roommate, this wouldn’t have even been an issue. When someone else is there, the bugs (real or imagined) are way less intimidating. 

It makes me wonder if I’m cut out for this solitary existence. Don’t get me wrong, I love having alone time but not 24/7. I miss being able to turn to someone and say, “Hey, you-know-who’s acting CRAZY again,” or, “A Doctor Who movie!?! I don’t know how I feel about this!” I miss having a constant sounding board, whether romantic or platonic. My girl friends are stepping up to the plate in amazing ways to fill the void but they aren’t physically next to me, sharing a home. There’s just nothing that compares to that.   

I’ve always been a nester. I love the idea of creating a safe space with someone and having it be, “us against the world.” I know that one day I will have that again, but its absence today is a bummer. I want someone to come and give me a hug and tell me they’ll keep an eye out for that scary bug, even if it was never really there.

Can't cry anymore!

We’ve all been in a place where we’re kind of on the verge of tears at all times. I’ve called that place home for the past, oh, six months. SIX MONTHS. Six months of shedding tears at the drop of a hat, for no logical reason. It’s gone on so long that it’s become normal and that is depressing (or is it “depression.” Probably a little of both.) I’m kind of sick of my emotions being so close to the surface but am not sure what to do…other than to just wait it out. How does one deal with a volume of grief that just seems to grow? Right now I’m trying to immerse myself in it by reading novels that deal with loss or sadness. My thinking is that maybe revelling in it will help, in a Zen way. You know, “BE the sadness.”

What would you do?

Oh, the guilt.

Having grown up very very Catholic, I feel a crushing amount of guilt on a daily basis: guilt for the way I look, the way I (sometimes) act, the way that I’ve dealt with certain situations. The list goes on and on. Is it just me or is guilt the most counterproductive of all emotions? I mean, sure, if you do a bad thing intentionally, you should feel bad…but if it comes from simply being yourself, that isn’t healthy. I have guilt down to a tragic science. One of my goals for this year – the last of my twenties – is to minimize unreasonable bad feelings. I’m no psychiatrist, but it seems like that can be accomplished in a few steps:

1.       Acknowledge the guilt
2.       Identify its source
3.       Calmy and firmly release yourself from it.

There’s something effective in just saying out loud, “I am no longer going to feel guilt over this.” It might not disappear immediately, but you’re starting to reprogram your brain to respond to more positive commands. Like training a dog. Guilt is bad. No guilt is a treat. (Just as long as I don’t start rewarding myself with actual treats, like candy or something. That’ll mean weight gain and SURPRISE! Guilt.)

I look back at my relationship with my ex and am consumed with remorse for a lot of different things. I feel shitty for having dragged us both through the mud. I feel like a fool for having ignored things that didn’t sit right with me, things that I can’t believe I didn’t identify as red flags. I feel like a jerk for having taken my friends and family along for the ride on the emotional roller coaster (even though I’m sure they didn’t mind…much.) In general I feel like I did just about everything wrong, right up to this very day. I’m missing him and missing our connection, and am not sure how to go about handling it. 

GUILT. 

There’s either a giant glass of wine or an hour on the stair-stepper in my future. Maybe both at the same time. Mmmmm…and I refuse to feel guilty about that.

Komplete Kraziness

Most people are probably rolling their eyes and shrugging at this whole Kardashian/Humphries divorce debacle, but it kind of pisses me off. I may not be entirely sure about marriage for myself, but I believe in the sanctity on marriage and that it shouldn’t be, for lack of a better term, pissed on. And the fact that she made a statement saying that it was a “difficult decision?” Give me a break. A difficult decision is not made this quickly. The entire marriage only lasted 72 days (after they started dating in December of 2010, which means they haven’t even been together for a whole year.) This is craziness! When my now-ex and I decided to end our relationship, it definitely was not something we took lightly. We worked hard to try to salvage things, probably for about a year. Longer than the Ks were even together!

I just don’t get it. Here are my personal “rules” for marriage (and commitment in general.) They are simple:

·         If you’re not 150% sure about someone, you shouldn’t marry them.
·         Once you’re married you should try like hell to make it work.

The end.

An embarassment of...embarassments.

This post has nothing to do with romantic or platonic relationships, but rather what a freaking spaz I am. I really should be followed around by a camera crew, because at least once a day I act like an ass, say something completely insane, or physically fall down.

A few days ago I was walking towards my house and saw my landlady on the front stoop, doing some transplanting of her potted flowers. Her back was to me so I said, “Hi [Landlady]!” then I took a breath and as I did, I snorted so loud and long that it reverberated off the cobblestone street and the buildings around us. The snort hung in the air like a cloud of gnats before moving away down the street at about 1/100^th the speed of sound.  She was gracious enough to pretend that I hadn’t just made a sound like a human jackhammer, god love her.

There’s a woman I work with who lives close to me and from time to time she’ll offer me a ride home. When she pulled over to the bus stop yesterday afternoon I ran up to the car, thrilled that I would escape public transportation. But as I opened the door I could hear her groan and say, “Ohhhhhhhhhhh no,” under her breath. She was pulling over for someone else, and obviously didn’t want me tagging along. It doesn’t appear that she likes me too much, either, so that was even more embarassing. Probably because I said something 100% off the wall to her during one ride. She was telling me that both of her kids were asking for laptops: her son wanted one for graduation and her younger daughter wanted one just because. In my head I thought, “A laptop for graduation makes sense, but the daughter’s request is a bit too much for no occasion.” Of course, what came out of my mouth was, “Shouldn’t he get something…more…for graduating?” In the intonation of C. Bing, could I be any more presumptuous? It’s not even what I meant! I’ve been kicking myself for that one ever since.

And just to round things out, this morning the wind blew my skirt up above my waist while I stood waiting for the bus (with several other people.) Good morning, CDTA riders! I’m going to crawl under a rock and die now.

A Pattern Language

Someone (Oprah maybe?) once told me that the story of a relationship is written almost entirely during the first few interactions. Right off the bat you set patterns for how you relate, how you love and fight each other. From a psychological standpoint, I guess it’s pretty difficult to break out of those patterns once they’ve been laid down. When I think about the inception of my friendships and past romantic relationships, it really stands to reason. People I’ve met in bars will forever be drinking buddies. Friends I met in college will always want to break out an acoustic guitar and chain smoke. And the people I’ve loved at first sight will always be loved, no matter how nuts they may have turned out to be (specifically this one friend that I adore even though he’s a little on the self-destructive side. He’ll always be a delight in my eyes.) 

In the same way, when you start your relationship off on an adversarial foot, it’s probably going to be a fight all the way along. However it happens, your brain/heart seems to remember and it will never let you forget. Early in my twenties I dated a guy (I’m a total masochist, by the way, obviously) who introduced himself by saying, “You look like a real piece of work.” He was right, but what an ass.  Stupid me, I was charmed. We fought that day and every day during our tortured two-month “relationship.” We’d set the pattern and certainly followed through with it, to the bitter end.

These days I pay much closer attention to those first few interactions. It’s almost like looking right into the future of a relationship. Being in tune with those clues will save you a lot of heartache, trust me.  

(The title of this post is a blatant rip-off of one of my favorite books on architecture, A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. If you're into that sort of thing, I highly recommend it.)

Burn Notice

A few years ago I heard a story about a woman who unwittingly gave a sexually transmitted disease to one of her partners. She worked in a call center and when the guy got tested and found out about the disease, he embarked on a campaign to humiliate her. He called the 1-800 number dozens of times and when a representative answered he'd say, "Hey, do you know Amy? Does Amy work there? She burned me." The office was small, about thirty people all in the same room so everyone knew Amy and pretty soon everyone knew she had "burned" someone. The guy continued to call all day long, even after Amy went home, mortified and in tears.

I tell this story because it shows that we are only as good as our reactions to shitty situations. Sometimes you get burned and you want to lash out, but if you go about it the wrong way you'll lose all your credibility with people who under other circumstances would have totally been on your side. So no matter how upset you are and how slighted you feel, you can't make a hundred phone calls. You can't mount a campaign to make someone else's life a living hell, just because. We all get burned. Slap some salve on that thing and move on.

Friday Fluff

Going through a breakup will make you question just how marketable a commodity you are. Especially when you’re like me and have never been a master of positive self-esteem to begin with. I’ve been so down in the dumps that I thought I’d do a little shameless self-fluffing and talk about what I believe makes me a catch. The list does not include, “breathtaking beauty,” or, “oozing sexuality,” but there are some other positives. At least I think they’re positive:

I was born and raised to be a caregiver. This is totally my mom’s fault. Slap a set of pearls on her and hand her a vacuum and she could star in her own 1950’s family sitcom. There’s nothing I enjoy more than cooking a meal for someone, shaking up a few martinis and giving a good solid backrub. I don’t mind doing dishes, LOVE to grocery shop and if you want a fresh, homemade pie, just say the word. This doesn’t mean that I’m a doormat of course or some sort of anti-feminist but I like to make people happy and comfortable. 

I have hidden talents that range from weird and useless to totally enviable. Under the weird and useless category would be the ability to write backwards and forwards at the same time and name all 50 states in alphabetical order. (Admittedly very very useless.) The enviable ones include my musicality, which I think is the best thing about me and my ability to recall the name of just about any entertainment personality under the sun. (For example, what was the name of the actor who played the father on Family Matters? Why, that would be the irrepressible Reginald VelJohnson, of course. )

I wouldn’t say no to a threesome. No need to elaborate on that one.

When I love someone I love them totally, unconditionally and forever. We may fall out of touch or get into a fight but if you need me I will be there, ready to give you my last cent or gasp of sweet oxygen. I’m also generous with my drugs.

Gosh, I feel better already! That might just be the drugs, but whatever. Happy Friday!

We Know We're Crazy*

The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem. We ladies sometimes do crazy stuff that we (hopefully) know is crazy, but we do it anyway. Perhaps because you all drive us to it, perhaps because we just can’t help ourselves. So how about a little group therapy. 

We know we’re in the wrong when we:

• Get rid of your stuff. When my now-ex and I moved in together, I was fascinated by his “stuff.” Maybe due to the fact that our belongings meshed really well and we have similar taste, but whatever the reason, I loved it and never wanted to pare it down. Women seem to have this compulsive need to find the one thing men love the most (comic book collections, the comfy t-shirt, porn) and annihilate it. Don’t ask me why. If it isn’t yours, leave it be!
• Fill in our own blanks. The blame for this one is definitely spread equally between genders. Men, you tend to give us information on a ‘need to know’ basis. Just the talking points. We want the whole story and if you don’t include each and every minor detail, we’ll convince ourselves that you have something to hide. We’ll write our own story, complete with the wildest ending imaginable. We’re creative like that, so do us (and yourself) a favor and just tell us the whole story.
• Snoop. I’m guilty of snooping, but never unprompted snooping. One time I was using my (MY) laptop and discovered that an ex had visited a dating website specifically geared towards casual hook-ups. I did some more digging and saw that there was a fresh new profile he was still signed into! So I made some fun, informative changes to that profile. See how you make us do crazy things? That one was totally not my fault because I mean, c’mon. If you’re dumb enough to use my computer to find, “Local sluts who want to f&*$” then you deserve what you get.
• Tell you what you want to hear. “I don’t want kids, either.” “You’re the best I’ve ever had.” “Size doesn’t matter.” OK so some of these are little white lies that probably won’t hurt anybody but when it comes to the big issues, we need to stick up for ourselves a bit more. The real answers are, “I'm not sure if I want kids. I think you’ll make a great dad but don’t want to scare you away by saying it.” “You’re very good at taking care of business, but there’s room for improvement,” and, “Size only matters when it’s small. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

*Case in point. God, I wish I didn't have such a great example of me being crazy to share, but...yesterday I called my ex to say hi and the call was sent to voicemail. Not immediate voicemail, but the "ring ring ring voicemail," that lets you know the person has CHOSEN to send you to voicemail. Today I texted him, "Are you pissed at me for some reason?" No response. So I call again. Voicemail. Call again. Voicemail. Third call (affectionately know as the "You're truly crazy" call) he picks up and now he is kind of pissed...he was taking a nap.

I'm crazy.

I'm Bushed

I’ve been having a few kind of desperate days, feeling so sad but not having any outlet for it. I think the people in my life are tired of listening to me moan about my ruined relationship. Heck, I’m sick of listening to me. In general I'm just tired of being sad. Last week I had cocktails with a friend who told me she wanted to introduce me to someone. I was hesitant, internally, but tried to put on a happy face. “Even if you guys can be friends, it’s a good thing,” she said. I couldn’t argue with that. 

But there’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than a set-up. So when she invited me over this weekend my first thought was, “Is this an ambush?” I was scheduled to show up a little late and when I told her I was on my way she responded, “Oh [your ex] is here, just FYI.” Immediately a wave of relief rushed over me. Not an ambush with a new guy that I wasn’t ready for, but a nice afternoon with friends and the guy I felt so comfortable with. The one who was the other half of me for so long. I thought I’d be able to slip into my old skin, if even for a moment.

So, so wrong.

Easy!

“Doing my laundry and thinking of you.”

I gulped, then deleted the text message and dropped my phone onto the table like a hot potato. I stared at it as if it was a living thing that might pop up and sink its teeth into my neck. Mentally (and possibly out loud) I repeated, “No no no. Nonononono.”

Throughout my dating history, I’ve had several visceral reactions like this. The first time it happened was in fourth grade, when a classmate tried to kiss me on Valentine’s Day. To this day we laugh about how I bit him right through his winter coat. *Nervous laughter* I’m not even joking. So basically, I know when I like a guy and when I don’t. When I don’t like someone, my stomach becomes a mess of knots and I feel like a caged animal. In the past I would run like hell in the opposite direction, avoid the situation, blow the guy off or ignore his advances until he gave up. I know that there’s nothing mature about that, but you have to remember that the last time I “dated” I was 24 years old (and painfully immature.) This time I figured I’d approach the situation differently.

“That’s flattering! But I’m so emotionally unavailable right now.”

His response was a cop-out, something about me having misinterpreted his initial text (yeah right, dude) but I let it roll by. We exchanged a few more texts about other things and there seemed to be no awkwardness. I was shocked by how easy it was to stop him in his tracks. God, if the younger me had known this, I would have saved, like, months upon months of stressing over how to “let someone down easy.” Turns out there’s nothing hard about it. Now that I have this tool in my belt, I might use it more often. Who’s next?

Maybe usually means no.

About a month before we broke up, my ex and I went to a weekend-long wedding out of town. It was so lovely: a quaint resort in the Catskills, a room in the cutest bed and breakfast ever, ponds and streams and barns. We were both pretty enchanted by the event. One night while we were there, he turned and said to me, “Maybe we could have something like this.”

My heart swelled.

Early on in our relationship (and throughout it) we discussed marriage. He was adamant in not wanting it, I was adamantly ambivalent. Coming from a divorced family, I just don’t think it’s necessary. Commitment is necessary, not marriage. And I see NO reason for a big day filled with hoopla. But of course every one wants someone to want to marry them, right? I wasn’t looking to get married, but when the man I love said, “Maybe we could have something like this,” how could I not get all gooey inside? I remember waking up the next day and thinking, “He wants to marry me.” It was like Christmas morning or something. I didn’t realize how big a deal it was to me for him to have the intent. We could have gone on happily for the next 40 years without actually getting married but the fact that he wanted to seal the deal, even just a little, meant a lot to me.

Funny how quickly things fell apart after that. You could analyze it any number of ways: maybe I realized that he wasn’t serious. Maybe he realized that I wasn’t the right person to marry. Maybe he realized that he had said that in an emotional moment and "maybe" meant "no." I don’t know. But now that I got a taste of the metaphorical wedding cake, I think I want more. I don’t want the planning or the presents, the big day or the spotlight focus. I don’t want a weekend wedding in the Catskills. I don’t even know if I want any wedding. I just want the intent; the, “maybe we could have something like this.” Because we really could have, and I still can.

Virtually real.

A lovely anonymous commenter posted this a few days ago:

I've been interested in your posts about the breakup...going through a pretty awful one right now myself. Do you find the blogging therapeutic? I feel like I just want to crawl into a cave and not talk about it, acknowledge it, allow it to be real.

Trust me, if there was a cave nearby and it was socially acceptable to take, like, a two-month-long sabbatical to said cave, I’d totally be there. In the dark, wrapped in a bear skin, clutching a mag of red wine and a hanky. There’s still a part of me that can’t wrap my mind around the fact that we’ve really broken up. Even though I’ve physically moved to a new apartment that’s my own place, it still feels like our lives haven’t entirely separated. And they really haven’t. We talk every day and spend time together (we even watched “our” TV show premieres together the other day.) That contributes to the unreal feeling, for sure. 

Writing about it is therapeutic, for the most part, but there’s another aspect of it that makes it seem…I dunno, somehow fictional. Like, I’m just telling these people’s stories and, hey, maybe there WILL be a happy ending! So I constantly have to push that feeling away while I’m writing about the break-up.

One thing that did make it realer was that very very shortly after we broke up, he was already hooking up with people. Not sure what level of hooking up, but at the very least making out with people in public places. I know that’s pretty much what guys do. They don’t give themselves enough time to grieve (whether they know they need it or not) and jump right into something else. Obviously that’s his prerogative now that he’s single, but it felt like a total bitch slap. A bitch slap that snapped me back into reality, at least a little bit. 

Anonymous, I’m bummed to hear you’re going through something similar. It truly sucks so hard I can’t even put it into words. I wish I could give you a hug.

You break it, you bought it.

It’s nearly impossible to not start looking at least a little bit once you’ve broken up. I’d spent the past four years not looking at all, happily and naturally, because being in love pretty much blindfolds me. I could never cheat on someone because I can’t see anything worth cheating with. It’s like every other guy on earth ceases to exist. I am physically incapable of being into two people at once and have never done the “soft” breakup. You know what I mean: you’re dating someone that you want to break up with so you find someone else, start dating them and then breakup with the first guy.

Ew. No. 

But now that I’m free as a bird I can’t help but look. There are lots of nice, funny, talented guys out there who seem ripe for the picking. I could name five local men right now I’d be LUCKY to be in a relationship with. Even if I could trick them into wanting to do something so crazy, though, it would be pointless because my heart isn’t in it. I didn’t realize this until last week when it seemed like the potential was there for a date. I like the guy, for real. But I’m still in love. It was kind of a lightbulb moment for me…

Still in love. 

Certainly not because I want to be. It seems so unfair that you can’t just make the conscious decision to fall out of love with someone. I’m so good at controlling other emotions, but not love. Every time you try to turn it off, it redoubles itself and laughs at you. Makes you feel foolish and helpless. Makes it hurt allllll over again.

I have always loved the phrase, “You can’t get over someone until you get under someone,” but for all its pith, I don’t think that’s going to work for me.  So I have to hand over my heart to that cosmic doctor: Father Time. It’s totally cliched but so true. It’ll just take some time. Until then I’ll be looking but not touching.