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I was unceremoniously dumped two days before Valentine’s Day.
I’d just returned from a business trip the night before. During my three days away HE and I had exchanged calls and messages that gave absolutely no indication of his impending distance. The night of the break up I ran some errands including my weekly trek to Target and the Red Box, and as I entered the house and headed up the stairs, I smelled toothpaste. I heard dresser drawers opening and closing. I thought that he was preparing for bed. His smooth soft footsteps were rhythmic against the hardwoods in my bedroom and I was prepared to suggest we watch the movie in bed.
When I walked in he was wearing the proverbial deer in headlights expression and then slid past me into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” I asked, watching him enter and exit the room.
At first he didn’t say anything. So I stepped in front of him and asked again.
When he finally responded he offered a combination of reasons for his behavior. At first he said he needed to take a couple days. I looked at him like he was crazy. Take a couple days where? We then exchanged words, but I was too confused to yell or cry or even ask questions. And then he was gone. My straight-laced boyfriend who I’d fallen for because of his consistency and transparency. The guy who I committed to because he was enlightened and believed that relationships are partnerships that survive the good and bad times. For the first time since we began dating I was in the dark.
I stomped up the stairs to my bedroom and fell on the king size bed that swallowed me. I laid on “his side” smelling his scent on the pillow. I laid there in the dark realizing that if I would have taken the long way home tonight, I would have not been there to witness him shoving clothes in a bag and racing out the front door to his car.
Then I laughed. Because lately when I get angry I don’t know what else to do. I laughed loudly so that the sound danced off the walls in the black room, and offered some comfort in the midst of the fear and panic that I was feeling. I laughed because I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out my closet and tell me I’d been punked. I laughed because I’ve been the dump-er and dump-ee enough to know that in the end only one of you is in the dark when a break up comes “out of nowhere.” And I laughed because four days ago I booked a trip for us to a place that I’ve been three times, but because he had never been I was willing to oooh and ahhh like a true tourist at places and landmarks that I knew better than the tour guide. I laughed because the trip is non-refundable.
I laughed to keep from crying.
A few days ago, as I’m waiting in the airport security line HE texts me with a half-assed apology and explanation. I’m barely done reading the message before my fingers were tapping away on my Blackberry keyboard, but then I deleted everything I wrote. What’s the point, really? What else is there to say? A friend assured me that he’ll come back [to me] after he’s had some time to be alone and think. But any self-respecting woman knows that no matter how much you like someone, you can’t allow people to check in and out of the relationship all willy nilly because they aren’t sure how to deal with stressful situations. I’m not emotionally equipped to deal with this type of trauma on a repeated basis. Once is enough for me, thank you very much.
Work has offered a strange level of solace. I’m on the road every week through the end of March which keeps me pretty occupied. And maybe I’m in denial, but I’m doing considerably well. I’ve only had one major breakdown. At the airport returning home from Phoenix the other night, I was grabbing a bite to eat in a restaurant, and John Mayer’s Dreaming with a Broken Heart came on the radio. I started to blink back tears over my burger and fries, and just as the waitress approached to offer ketchup, the warm tears spilled over and I couldn’t hear anything but Maher’s lyrics.
When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering was [he] really here?
Is [he] standing in my room?
No [he’s] not, ’cause [he’s] gone, gone, gone, gone, gone
As Maher serenaded me, I really started to feel sorry for myself. I decided that I’m never going to find anyone else to date. EVER. I’m never going to find someone else who understands why I get flushed when I walk into a bookstore. Or why I hate shoe shopping and crowds. I’m never going to find someone else who gets how I can equally adore the music of the Dixie Chicks, Janis Joplin, Alanis Morissette and lil Wayne. And I’ll never find someone else who believes that I can fly regardless of how overly-ambitious my goals are.
I cried because the past few nights I woke up blinking furiously in the dark, trying to get a sense for another person in the room. Running my hand over the empty, cold sheets where his warm, shirtless body should be. Straining to hear his soft snore. And then burying my head in the pillow praying to fall back asleep fast so that I don’t have to deal with reality that I am the only one there.
Thank God for logic which all but guarantees that I will meet someone new even if I can’t conceive it now. That there will come a day when hearing or saying HIS name will no longer catch my breath in my chest. And on the tough mornings when I don’t want to get out of bed, I remember my mother’s priceless advice many years ago after my first love broke my heart, and I swore I’d rather be dead than live without him: “Keep pushing through because everyday gets a little bit better and a little easier until one day you wake up and it won’t hurt.”
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