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.
