At 1:00 sharp, I have lunch with my ex boyfriend. We do not fight, we do not have to get together, we enjoy our Tuesday lunch. He was a major part of my daughters life, and when you live with someone for 7 years you get to be more than a couple. Indeed, in the end we really weren't a couple... we were still together because we are family. And so now, every Tuesday before he has a play day with my miniature self, we go to coffee. We talk about school (mine), how the family is (his), love for the aforementioned miniature (both parties inclusive). And it's good. And it's important. And honestly, it's my favorite part of the week.
As we part at 2:45, I feet compelled to offer to meet his new girlfriend. He's wanted me to for the 2 years they have been together, but I can't. It hurts that he is kind to her, never hits her, never yells at her. Never calls her stupid, never throws her things away because she shouldn't have left them laying around. Never tells her she doesn't deserve to be loved, that she's pathetic, that no one can stand her, that he hates waking up every day she's alive. "Isn't that sick" I think sometimes, "that I am angry with a woman because she doesn't go through something so terrible... Isn't that sick?". But, the last time he asked if I could meet her, I felt like he was asking me to give him permission to forgive himself. Which says more to the point that on his own, he simply can't. I escaped, I take care of me, we are friends, but he still can't forgive himself until he sees that I am OK with it if he does. He feels he has no right to on his own... and that earns my forgiveness. And getting out of the car today, I say "I'll meet her if you want". And he paused and responded very sincerely "Thank you. But you don't... just... whatever you're comfortable with". And he was a terrible boyfriend yes, but he's a wonderful person, he's essential to my life today.
And then I think to myself with 100% certainty... "I love my ex boyfriend."
**********************
Fast forward. 3:30. I call my often cuddle/sometimes kiss/totally gets me ex boyfriend. We are very good friends. We do not fight unless it is romantic in nature because we remain eternally unresolved. More accurately, we do not exactly fight. We get cold. We bicker. We get jealous with no right to. But, we do not exactly fight. Today we have coffee, we complain about school, we brush fingers for silly reasons because we are not physically affectionate in public. I look at him for a moment in that "we are not involved, but we are involved" way, where I am just noticing how much I like the color of his hair, how charming his freckles are, that I like the beard more as we get older, that his eyes shine more than most men. he always looks a little angry, and a little sad-- he always has. I have a moment where I don't think and reach out and brush my finger tips over his hair near his eyebrow, and catching myself. Because I don't like things like that in public any more than he does, I grab for his sunglasses after I do it. It blends seamlessly, no one notices, he does not notice, I barely do myself.
I have been making him a mix CD for a few days, and suddenly I think of how many women he will put these songs on mix CDs for. He's done so several times, in snoopier days I saw evidence of such things on his computer when looking through for my own mixes. They were personal songs. Tender songs. They were me telling him I was in love with him, and exactly how. It takes days, weeks, months to find enough songs to tell someone exactly how you love them, it isn't fair for them to steal your songs and pawn them off, it's like skinning one person to keep another one warm so you can keep your coat. Maybe not something that melodramatic at all, but it's wrong. And it hurts like hell regardless of what it's like... I don't know where the thought came from, but I feel tears welling up and I tell him his sunglasses are ugly and put mine back on, then stop looking at him entirely.
It's October, and in October it gets cold suddenly in the evening in the Midwest.: It suddenly gets cold this particular evening, and I decide to leave abruptly. I hug him at his car tersely, kiss him lightly-- half on his mouth and half on the cheek-- and say good bye. I barely peek back and I'm furious with myself. I hate that I feel the way I do, I know better and I don't trust him and I shouldn't trust him, but it is what it is: I'm just one of the girls he keeps on his shelf, and I hate that I love my ex boyfriend.
*******************************
45 minutes later: I am going to a group get-together. We meet every Tuesday, I am able to join in because my daughter is with our friend and his new girlfriend. I walk in to our regular table, sit down, and notice that people are looking at me cautiously. I turn around and out of the bathroom walks my ex boyfriend. My friends, previously our friends, are looking at me waiting to see how to respond. I do not have a real family, not the way most people do, my friends are my family and they know that I need them, so they love me dearly. They watch me ready to shut down or hug him happily based entirely on my response. He looks perfect, he always did and being in Columbia for almost a year has not changed that. His hair is perfect and I remember how he used to approve of my hair color but not be fond of it past a certain length. His nails shine and I recall him telling me when my nail polish chipped. His outfit is coordinated flawlessly and I can hear him telling me what I should and should not wear, what colors don't work for me, what style shoes make me walk what way, the critique on my body, my weight, my skin... it has all been laying silent for all of this time waiting for today, somewhere just behind my ears.
It's hard to come somewhere when you know that everyone probably knows who you really were after the fact. It doesn't hurt me to let this man be accepted. I don't forget, but I forgive-- I have to. Because when I lean in to decide if I should hug him I smell his skin and it's familiar, and I remind myself that he used to kiss me in his sleep so hard that my lips bled from his teeth pressing against him, that he used to hold me so tightly in that same sleeping state that I was afraid he would strangle me and I wouldn't be able to wake him. It wasn't about me, he was asleep those nights and I could have been anyone.
It was that this man, so perfect, was starving to death for love in his elitist isolation, but no one was good enough. And so I promised then that I would love him, simply because he needed it. And he is still flawless, he is still starving.
And so in the way I would a scared withdrawn child who needs to be loved, I love my ex boyfriend.
*****************
Tonight, washing it all away in the shower, scrubbing away at their fingerprints on who I am today, it all catches up and I feel without reasoning for the first time since the parade of ex boyfriends started. I cry and I cry and I cry until the water gets cold, and I cry a bit more until my my nipples ache and turn purple, goose bumps turn my skin to the flesh of a plucked bird. I slide down the shower wall and sit with the water running over me as I cry, over my flawed hair and my replaceable hips and my ears raw from listening to too much music for other people.
I'm furious and I'm sick with the smiles and well meaning and I don't feel like being such a good fucking person for another second-- I hate hate hate my ex boyfriends.
Showing posts with label ex boyfriends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ex boyfriends. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
I don't know that I agreed to this.
I 100% chose to give birth to, keep and raise my child. I am aware of this. I 100% chose to go to school full time, I am aware of this. I 100% opted, declared, all on my own that I will not be dating, will not be having sex, will not be getting 'involved' (whatever the fuck that means) for as long as it takes (for whatever the fuck 'it' is). I all on my own decided that yes, I was going to be best friends with not 1 but 2 of my ex boyfriends, the two I love most for tremendously different reasons. I chose with no reservation to move into an extremely small apartment clear on the other side of my city from the area I have always lived. All of these things, totally up to me. I am aware of this all.
It's just that at the time, they sounded more like the above mentioned decisions than "I am choosing to be lonely and confused and overwhelmed, cluttered and exhausted, poor, and above all else, to have a really good reason to be the most neurotic woman I will ever know."
Nope. On their own, none of them really sounded like that... on their own, they all sounded like pretty good ideas at the time.
It's just that at the time, they sounded more like the above mentioned decisions than "I am choosing to be lonely and confused and overwhelmed, cluttered and exhausted, poor, and above all else, to have a really good reason to be the most neurotic woman I will ever know."
Nope. On their own, none of them really sounded like that... on their own, they all sounded like pretty good ideas at the time.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Why I hate Valentines Day Weekend: A rant in 3 parts
Part 1.
Child and Mother are sitting in kitchen eating breakfast before the valentines day party at Child's school. Child is sorting her cards for class, and Mother is trying to go over a visitation schedule proposed by father ( not in scene).
Child: Mommy, what are you getting for Valentines Day?
Mother: You made me a card, remember? I love it!
Child: No, don't you have a Valentine to give you something?
Mother:Yeah, you!
Child: No, I'm going to be Daddy's Valentine.
(Mother swears inaudibly, then smiles sweetly at Child who has not noticed her foaming at the mouth and twitching with rage, or that the walls have started to ooze blood)
Child: So, you don't have a Valentine, huh?
Mother: Nope, I don't.
Child: So why doesn't anyone love you? Can't anyone maybe just like you even? Just for Valentines Day?
(Mother exits scene abruptly)
Part 2
So we've established that I hate with emotionally violent passion my daughters father, as well as that I ought never write a screen-play (which incidentally is one of the reasons I hate said babydaddy so violently to begin with: Who in the flip won't watch their 1 month old child for 1 hour after not seeing them for, well, that entire month, because "that's the day I have to work on my screenplay"? And the idea of slightly civil co-parenting was gone before the co-parenting even began... not to imply that it ever did, mind you). So moving right along, let's just focus on my motivation now... such as, what motivates me to hate this holiday, and how does that tie in to said babydaddy?
Glad you asked.
Last year, when making the visitation schedule for this year, he had a girlfriend who lived in the same state as him. As such, he had scheduled this Valentines Day weekend for her to be with me despite him also scheduling LAST Valentines and the 4 years previous to be for me. After much haggling and begging, I was able to get him to bend last year, and I had my first Valentines Day in 5 years... and it seems, my only one. His girlfriend is gone back to NY this year, he could enjoyed a 3 day weekend with his daughter and I could have... oh, I don't even know, but the point is that I could have things to do to choose from at all. And, our daughter could have been his Valentine, which is all she really wants.
But, none of that will happen-- because when thinking of the next years plans for he and his daughter, what he was thinking of was his girlfriend. His romantic plans were the priority, not my daughter.
He did, however, send her a giant box of chocolates and yogurt covered pretzels. A box of candy, though I seem to think MAYBE I've sent him 37 emails in the past 4 years begging him every holiday to pleasepleaseplease stop sending giant boxes of sugar to my house.
But he did. And I had to put it up and give my daughter 1 piece of it then, and one piece after dinner. To which she responded with tears and yelling that daddy said she could have it, and I'm a mean mommy, and she hates me. Daddy giveth the candy and mommy taketh away.
Thank you, Babydaddy, for another special holiday.
Part 3)
Ah, the beauty that is the ex boyfriend.
For example, the ex boyfriend that took me for White Castle hamburgers one Valentines Day because I didn't have a lot of money that year. Despite the fact that he was independently wealthy. But, I didn't have enough to get my share of a hot-tub room and go to a nice dinner... so he said "Then lets not spend a lot of money". And so I covered his table with candy and sweets, organic honey comb and a giant stuffed monkey to go with the other monkeys around the house. I gave him a miniature mail-box stuffed full of tiny hand made cards, one for every day we had been together, and each one stating something I loved about him. Every single one was different, a tiny piece of artistic license applied to our love. And he gave me a very small teddy bear holding a wooden heart, something impersonal and not at all thoughtful, something which would suit a 47 year old kindergarten teacher who is partial to her 12 cats-- along side a card that said that he considered me his Valentine every day-- the card said that mind you, he simply signed his name (and I don't believe he signed it love). We rented a movie later, and he took me to White Castle, and less than a month after that he came in on a beautiful unusually springlike day and dumped me out of the clear blue sky.
I kissed, said hello, he said "This isn't working".
I taped the ugly little bear in a box, spent weeks sobbing, and re read that hollow little card from valentines day over and over and over again looking for something human, something to imply that this was a mistake. Finally, I was rescued by one of my best friends, also an ex. He stormed in one night as I lay in my pajamas while my daughter was out of town, reading over old journal entries looking for some clue that this had been coming and said I wasn't this girl, that this 'The Way We Were' bullshit simply didn't suit me... that I'm stronger than this sappiness, and that's the thing to be most loved about me, and somehow ended up making it my idea to watch a horror movie. Because he's a good ex.
And he was a good ex, is a good ex, often. The ex boyfriend that is the super-good friend I could totally make out with on Valentines Day if I had a sitter, and even practically asked if we could, and actually asked if I would do something with him for Valentines day at all.. The ex who would take me to a movie and give me a great back rub and remind me that he still thinks I'm amazing, help you to remind myself that I'm still amazing. Until I remember the time he told me he loved me but wasn't in love with me, and the time he showed up an hour late for a date, trashed.... the two times he did that, actually. And how on one of those nights we were having a pre-Valentines day date, actually... and he left his gifts in the restaurant bar, and how as a matter of fact, that WAS the night he said he loved me but wasn't in love with me. And I remember too that despite me calling him my best friend, he didn't give me a Christmas Present. He had other peoples wrapped and ready to mail, or already had been mailed for weeks.... it was only me that he didn't bother with. And that I was so mad that I gave his gift to a different ex, one I don't even like, to spite him.
A different ex, one who only ever bought 3 new pieces of furniture for our home in the past 7 years that we had lived together, and within less than a year with his new girl had made the trip to Chicago for Ikea, the trip I had suggested and begged for for years. And I just know that they are going to be making out on what should be our Ikea rug, cuddled up and watching our reruns of the Gilmore girls and the new episode of Greek. And I'll know that this is their second Valentines day together, and I'll remember the pictures splashed across facebook of his year previous. He'd never been so proud of me, he'd never taken me out for a heart-shaped cake. I can't even remember having ever done ANYTHING for Valentines day. He could say it was because he'd always been in the restaurant business, but he was that year too... in 3 months he had found something worth finding a few hours, and this year he would again. And I put in so many years, and he never found that time, and now every year at least for a while, I have to remember last year when that was what I saw. When I saw all I never got to live in almost a decade, given so effortlessly for someone bigger, better, more worthwhile in only a few months time than I could ever have been. It's jsut the facts... what wasn't for one is for another. And I don't think anyone could help it, when you have to know that much time was lost, what you were never worth in 7 years, what some stranger could be in a few short months... It just makes you feel so small.
Or, it makes me feel small. Very.
And all of the Ghosts of Valentines Day Past that haunt me in the few days that a Valentines Day Weekend make me feel small really... and they're just going to keep coming, I'm going to become more and more haunted by the year, as all of us women who have opted out of the safety of marriage must at some point-- but there are times that I don't know that I'm made for this. It's true that I think that I think marriage is a little like giving up on the newness in life being wonderful anymore, but if there were a time that I'd given up on life having the potential to get better, this may be it... this fucking 3 days of candy and hearts and all the scorching fingerprints on me, from all the men I've ever been burned by.
And, that is Valentines Day Weekend. I love being a single mom, being single in general. I would generally be happier chewing on a scant cup of dirty sand with cigarette butts in it than be involved with anyone this year. But, I would also prefer be a part of some alternate universe that is basically the same, but that doesn't include Valentines Day or any of the self-inflicted pain there inclusive from the day that we allow our self-worth to be measured in love letters and Sodas, and remember how we've fallen short in so many years previous.
Child and Mother are sitting in kitchen eating breakfast before the valentines day party at Child's school. Child is sorting her cards for class, and Mother is trying to go over a visitation schedule proposed by father ( not in scene).
Child: Mommy, what are you getting for Valentines Day?
Mother: You made me a card, remember? I love it!
Child: No, don't you have a Valentine to give you something?
Mother:Yeah, you!
Child: No, I'm going to be Daddy's Valentine.
(Mother swears inaudibly, then smiles sweetly at Child who has not noticed her foaming at the mouth and twitching with rage, or that the walls have started to ooze blood)
Child: So, you don't have a Valentine, huh?
Mother: Nope, I don't.
Child: So why doesn't anyone love you? Can't anyone maybe just like you even? Just for Valentines Day?
(Mother exits scene abruptly)
Part 2
So we've established that I hate with emotionally violent passion my daughters father, as well as that I ought never write a screen-play (which incidentally is one of the reasons I hate said babydaddy so violently to begin with: Who in the flip won't watch their 1 month old child for 1 hour after not seeing them for, well, that entire month, because "that's the day I have to work on my screenplay"? And the idea of slightly civil co-parenting was gone before the co-parenting even began... not to imply that it ever did, mind you). So moving right along, let's just focus on my motivation now... such as, what motivates me to hate this holiday, and how does that tie in to said babydaddy?
Glad you asked.
Last year, when making the visitation schedule for this year, he had a girlfriend who lived in the same state as him. As such, he had scheduled this Valentines Day weekend for her to be with me despite him also scheduling LAST Valentines and the 4 years previous to be for me. After much haggling and begging, I was able to get him to bend last year, and I had my first Valentines Day in 5 years... and it seems, my only one. His girlfriend is gone back to NY this year, he could enjoyed a 3 day weekend with his daughter and I could have... oh, I don't even know, but the point is that I could have things to do to choose from at all. And, our daughter could have been his Valentine, which is all she really wants.
But, none of that will happen-- because when thinking of the next years plans for he and his daughter, what he was thinking of was his girlfriend. His romantic plans were the priority, not my daughter.
He did, however, send her a giant box of chocolates and yogurt covered pretzels. A box of candy, though I seem to think MAYBE I've sent him 37 emails in the past 4 years begging him every holiday to pleasepleaseplease stop sending giant boxes of sugar to my house.
But he did. And I had to put it up and give my daughter 1 piece of it then, and one piece after dinner. To which she responded with tears and yelling that daddy said she could have it, and I'm a mean mommy, and she hates me. Daddy giveth the candy and mommy taketh away.
Thank you, Babydaddy, for another special holiday.
Part 3)
Ah, the beauty that is the ex boyfriend.
For example, the ex boyfriend that took me for White Castle hamburgers one Valentines Day because I didn't have a lot of money that year. Despite the fact that he was independently wealthy. But, I didn't have enough to get my share of a hot-tub room and go to a nice dinner... so he said "Then lets not spend a lot of money". And so I covered his table with candy and sweets, organic honey comb and a giant stuffed monkey to go with the other monkeys around the house. I gave him a miniature mail-box stuffed full of tiny hand made cards, one for every day we had been together, and each one stating something I loved about him. Every single one was different, a tiny piece of artistic license applied to our love. And he gave me a very small teddy bear holding a wooden heart, something impersonal and not at all thoughtful, something which would suit a 47 year old kindergarten teacher who is partial to her 12 cats-- along side a card that said that he considered me his Valentine every day-- the card said that mind you, he simply signed his name (and I don't believe he signed it love). We rented a movie later, and he took me to White Castle, and less than a month after that he came in on a beautiful unusually springlike day and dumped me out of the clear blue sky.
I kissed, said hello, he said "This isn't working".
I taped the ugly little bear in a box, spent weeks sobbing, and re read that hollow little card from valentines day over and over and over again looking for something human, something to imply that this was a mistake. Finally, I was rescued by one of my best friends, also an ex. He stormed in one night as I lay in my pajamas while my daughter was out of town, reading over old journal entries looking for some clue that this had been coming and said I wasn't this girl, that this 'The Way We Were' bullshit simply didn't suit me... that I'm stronger than this sappiness, and that's the thing to be most loved about me, and somehow ended up making it my idea to watch a horror movie. Because he's a good ex.
And he was a good ex, is a good ex, often. The ex boyfriend that is the super-good friend I could totally make out with on Valentines Day if I had a sitter, and even practically asked if we could, and actually asked if I would do something with him for Valentines day at all.. The ex who would take me to a movie and give me a great back rub and remind me that he still thinks I'm amazing, help you to remind myself that I'm still amazing. Until I remember the time he told me he loved me but wasn't in love with me, and the time he showed up an hour late for a date, trashed.... the two times he did that, actually. And how on one of those nights we were having a pre-Valentines day date, actually... and he left his gifts in the restaurant bar, and how as a matter of fact, that WAS the night he said he loved me but wasn't in love with me. And I remember too that despite me calling him my best friend, he didn't give me a Christmas Present. He had other peoples wrapped and ready to mail, or already had been mailed for weeks.... it was only me that he didn't bother with. And that I was so mad that I gave his gift to a different ex, one I don't even like, to spite him.
A different ex, one who only ever bought 3 new pieces of furniture for our home in the past 7 years that we had lived together, and within less than a year with his new girl had made the trip to Chicago for Ikea, the trip I had suggested and begged for for years. And I just know that they are going to be making out on what should be our Ikea rug, cuddled up and watching our reruns of the Gilmore girls and the new episode of Greek. And I'll know that this is their second Valentines day together, and I'll remember the pictures splashed across facebook of his year previous. He'd never been so proud of me, he'd never taken me out for a heart-shaped cake. I can't even remember having ever done ANYTHING for Valentines day. He could say it was because he'd always been in the restaurant business, but he was that year too... in 3 months he had found something worth finding a few hours, and this year he would again. And I put in so many years, and he never found that time, and now every year at least for a while, I have to remember last year when that was what I saw. When I saw all I never got to live in almost a decade, given so effortlessly for someone bigger, better, more worthwhile in only a few months time than I could ever have been. It's jsut the facts... what wasn't for one is for another. And I don't think anyone could help it, when you have to know that much time was lost, what you were never worth in 7 years, what some stranger could be in a few short months... It just makes you feel so small.
Or, it makes me feel small. Very.
And all of the Ghosts of Valentines Day Past that haunt me in the few days that a Valentines Day Weekend make me feel small really... and they're just going to keep coming, I'm going to become more and more haunted by the year, as all of us women who have opted out of the safety of marriage must at some point-- but there are times that I don't know that I'm made for this. It's true that I think that I think marriage is a little like giving up on the newness in life being wonderful anymore, but if there were a time that I'd given up on life having the potential to get better, this may be it... this fucking 3 days of candy and hearts and all the scorching fingerprints on me, from all the men I've ever been burned by.
And, that is Valentines Day Weekend. I love being a single mom, being single in general. I would generally be happier chewing on a scant cup of dirty sand with cigarette butts in it than be involved with anyone this year. But, I would also prefer be a part of some alternate universe that is basically the same, but that doesn't include Valentines Day or any of the self-inflicted pain there inclusive from the day that we allow our self-worth to be measured in love letters and Sodas, and remember how we've fallen short in so many years previous.
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