Dumped

Movies portray breakup scenes in montages: gorgeously made-up heroines, perfectly placed tears, and rain-streaked windows, all timed to soft, lilting songs about hearts that never recover; songs that are only acceptable to the audience because they, of course, know that the song doesn't really mean what it says until the fat lady sings it (and there are no fat ladies in blockbuster movies).

The reality of being dumped is actually quite different. Finding yourself in the middle of a dumping is shocking in its harsh, unexpected rush of grimy, undesirable emotions. It's jolting to watch your self-esteem plummet drastically to the bottom of the "unwanted party" well. Horrible to feel as if your stomach is trying to swallow your heart. And your heart is trying to crawl to the back of your spine. Stunning to watch the world drain of color, the dogs piss on the rosebushes, the babies with red, squinched faces squall with gaping mouths, the weeds choke the fragile daffodils.

Tuesday and Wednesday, okay and Thursday, alright and Friday, were days spent in denial. It doesn't mean what I think it means. Of course he'll call. Of course we're not over. The phone will ring. His headlights will sweep along the white of my closed blinds. The Cavalry will ride over the hill offering an excuse for his lame behavior, and all can be forgiven. I read, reread, reread, and reread, until memorizing his e-mail and finally convinced myself that, yes, it meant what it said. It quacked, it waddled, it floated, it was yellow, it had feathers. Need I say more? It was a proverbial duck, and the fat lady was trailing after it, warming up her vocal cords. On Saturday, I accepted that it was over.

In retrospect, the first cut really is the deepest. I can remember crawling to the back of my closet in high school and drinking from the twelve pack I begged my older sister to buy me, tears and snot running down into my mouth, mixing with the beer (ah, it was crap beer…who noticed a little salty phlegm?). I thought I would die. That moment, on the floor of my closet, in the dark, with my eighties wardrobe dangling above my head, would be my last. How did one survive a broken heart? At 34, I know it goes day by day, until you move yourself far enough away from it (day 154ish?). And you rationalize the hell out of it until he ends up the loser (yep…he'll regret it one day. I'll be the one that he never forgets.).

You do start to breathe again. Once you force yourself off of the floor and turn off the No Doubt/Sheryl Crow/REM/ /Sarah McLachlan song you've had on repeat for the last hour and a half. Pictures, love letters and presents get packed away. Phone messages get deleted. And you begin to train your mind to see the world as independent of him. The Mexican restaurant is just a Mexican restaurant, the weekly snuggle on the sofa television show is just a television show, and the inside joke that made you snort in the five-star restaurant loses its humor, or is forgotten entirely. Life pushes us past standing forlornly lost in one place, looking at our empty hands.

The reality is that the minute we get dumped, the person that dumped us is no longer the person that we are mourning. We fall in love with the person who is in love with us. And the person dumping us is so obviously not him.

How's that for a decent rationalization?

Only 147ish days to go.

Coupling Contemplation

It seems almost seasonal, definitely cyclical, to surrender to the pessimistic insistence that there is no future to my romantic relationship beyond our next date, and with tremendous weariness, I sit with loads of self-pity and beautiful despondency piled around me. I sip decaf coffee, chosen so that the bitter on my tongue matches the bitter of my heart, listen to songs of despair and heartache, and resist the urge to put my head in my hands and cry. I try to get my head to a point where I can see myself alone again. When the picture becomes a clear view of a resignedly pained but stoic and independent woman who fills her time with cooking classes, Sierra Club hikes, and public library book clubs, I know that it is time to move on.

The problem this time is that I don't know what moving on means. Moving on could mean cutting the ties of three years and negotiating all aspects of my life as alone as you can be with a seven-year old child and a very high-maintenance dog in tow. But in this case, it also could mean getting over my stubborn idea of what I need, or what all of this should look like, and just accepting that the way things are is the way things are. Moving on could mean accepting that, as I have for the past three years, what is between us is simply what is between us right now. We share no house. We share no kids. We share no money. We share no responsibilities. We share no vision of where we will be in four, twelve, or twenty-two years. It is not assumed in social and familial events that I will be with him, or he with me. Crisis in either household is dealt with alone, details relayed after the fact over a phone call that attempts to cover the space of the six miles that separate where we live. Date nights that allow us to fall asleep and wake up next to each other are few and far between and always require a packed bag with toiletries and clean underwear.

I don't know what moving on means because after three years, things are still good. Despite our lack or time, or maybe because of it, I am as in love now as I was then, actually, even more so. I still laugh at his jokes that often cross a frat-boy line and encourage me to blushingly cross that line as well. Conversations span hours on the sofa, my feet in his lap, or his in mine, covering nothing and everything. When something happens, wonderful or terrible, he is the first person I want to tell. His opinion, his advice, his rational, calm, and wise perspective are still anchors for me when the waters of the rest of my life get too rough. Pictures, music, cards, and even rooms in my house are testament to the fact that after three years, as separate as we have kept parts of our lives, we have blended enough that there are splinters of him that will be around long after we pack up whatever it is that needs to be packed up and handed it all back.

I don't know what moving on means after three years because despite the fact that things are still good, a switch has flipped for me, and it is suddenly not enough. I am heart-breakingly, disastrously tired of being where we are. I am sick of packing a bag, having done it so much, it is rote. I am so unsatisfied now by hearing about his day, or telling him about mine, over the space of six miles that the conversation turns flat most nights, and we hang up the phone before anything of substance is said. And I'm tired of looking four, twelve and twenty-two years down the road and alternately picturing him there, and picturing myself without him.

I don't know what moving on means because I will be more alone without him than I am now. And sometimes that seems okay. And sometimes, it doesn't. He is the best man I have ever known, and giving him up means giving up that. I know, with frightening certainty, that there is no one out there that will fit me as well as he does. Yet, right now, in this regard, we are mismatched.

With any situation, if I could pry back the cover of the future and see where all of this ends up, it would be so much easier to decide which road is the right one. And then I could get up off of this chair, chuck the bitter coffee down the drain, shut off the whiny "whoa is me" music, and do something that resembles productivity today. But, even though it's April, and the day before Easter, it's gray, cold, and snowy outside. And as harshly as it would be judged by an outsider, the music is slow-head-bobbingly comforting. And I really don't have much that needs to be done today anyway, house already cleaned, child running around in bliss wreaking havoc with her best friend, work left at work. So I think I'll sit just a little longer, head in hands, music pathetic, and futilely wait for a direction.