The relationship. Is over.
And it did not end well.
I’d never been in love before her, and I can say that now honestly as in the last week I have shuffled closer to insanity than I ever have, which can only mean love was had, and lost.
She came over to hang out. And we made guacamole. Once it was eaten I thought it was time to do it.
I laid my head in her lap, which she, admittedly received awkwardly and let it all out. “I’m still in love with you, and I think we can make this work”. To which she said nothing. “We had a lot of problems, yes, but since the break-up I’ve looked deep inside of myself and really tried to improve on all of the things you said I should improve on once I looked deep inside myself, and now that I’ve improved, I think It’s time to give us another shot..” Tick. Tick. Tick. “… Cause I’m still in love with you…”
It is in these moments when you understand how loud the sound of nothing can be.
She paused, and said, “I’m going to say something that’s going to hurt you.”
And it is in these moments when you understand how much you preferred the sound of nothing.
“I’ve been seeing someone for the past month… and we’re exclusive.”
Which was, honestly, not something I was expecting to hear.
See we broke up over the phone, and the events post-breakup were so chaotic and confusing that the only logical conclusion, I thought, was to let the dust settle, regroup, and try it again. After all, who falls in love, breaks up over a phone call, and doesn’t give it another go? Seems like such a waste – building a locomotive only to turn it into a museum the first time it falls off the tracks – of course we’d give it another go – I just needed enough time to realize that the net-value of my freedom was less than misery I’d feel without her. (Enough time alone that a complete inability to make yourself cum without a small wink of shame in the mirror has a way of doing that). I know I was taking a little time storming back to her after getting broken up with, but the idea that we’d be able to just shed each other after we had gone through so much drama together (and we did – big stuff) was impossible to me. Yes, I had complained and wavered when I was in the relationship, but I had no perspective outside the relationship to compare - I complain and waver now. I’m a complainer and a waverer. Being in love and maintaining sanity takes practice - you only know you can speak German once you’re in Germany and it takes a good deal of fucking up schnitzel to know what isn’t a sausage. This is how I felt.
And then, In that one sentence, I knew, the relationship, was over. All the refreshing of her MySpace profile, the checking of her IMDB resume had to stop – all these purvish little ways of keeping her retouched image in my head facilitated by an internet intent on snapshots of memories.
Love is like gluing your heart to someone else’s. You share one common goal – to keep this blood flowing, but if one person develops an irregular beat, however small or hidden, it runs the risk of stopping the entire mechanism. To a lesser degree I see myself having done this.
Peeling two glued items apart is a destructive task. And frustrating. The very act of gluing in the first place says I plan on these two things being stuck together for quite some time - but when they separate, or just find themselves separated, things are going to get torn. There simply is no easy way to dizzolve glue, you separate by ripping.
But glue is strong shit, and if those two hearts can manage to not short the other one out with it’s momentary, say, indecision, than continue on it will. This is what I thought would happen.
But happen it didn’t.
So it was with a distinct tearing sound that I received that little bit of information, and had to swallow hard to get that last chunk of humble pie down my little throat before coming to my senses. Before deleting her from my Gmail quick contacts so I know whenever she’s online, before removing the risky pictures of her in my cell phone, before slowly rediscovering the solitary resolution of being single, again.I remember having a distinct guacamole taste under my tongue as in that one moment this bucket-full of revelations came crashing in on me – the relationship, was over. And short of stealing Doc Brown’s Delorian and going back a year it was unchangeable – what I had done, what she had done, was cast in the carbonite of our memories, and here I was. With my fucking head still in her lap.
I had spent a good deal of time discussing my breakup with Tere, a Mexican woman who owns a comedy club I perform at a lot. She has been my informal coach in all of this, and I have disobeyed most of her advice selfishly thinking that I’d only know if it hurts once I’m hurt.”Joo know” she’d say to me in her gently lilting accent, “If she starts to see someone helse, jour going to go crasee.” And I’d laugh it off thinking “Don’t worry Tere, who builds a locomotive only to turn it into a museam the first time it runs off the tracks?”, but it is in hindsight that I can see the error in my thinking and the honesty in her coaching. I haven’t gone crasee per se, but my already hyperventilating imagination has gone into overdrive dealing with the acceptance of my relationship being over, and even more, with the formation of elaborate fantasies about her and the new guy enjoying themselves and just generally being happy and well laid with myself nowhere in the room. Or house. Maybe he has a house, I dunno, all I know is that’s he’s mid 30’s, successful, and they’re exclusive. That and he probably has a golden dick and can cure the sick. With it.
And with this, phase two begins.
Whatever that is.
And from now on I’m letting them speak first.
