Department of the Navy, �Survival: Field Manual 21-76�
This is the epilogue of sorts to the entire Hawaii adventure of myself and Arlette. The story begins here. There are various links for the rest of the story after that. I�m just saying that you should read these first. After all, why give away the ending?
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Let�s talk about breakups.
Looking back on the breakups I�ve had, the theme has been fairly consistent. But let�s examine them:
- The first girl was somebody who I dated for nearly three years. Kristen moved away to college at Humbolt University. Neither of us had cars, and eventually the letters dried up. But when she came back and found me, I was instantly smitten again, and tried to re-light our old flame.
It didn�t work. The time spent apart with no contact had made the gap too wide to bridge. At the very same time that I was trying to convince us that we could re-start, she was trying to convince me that there wasn�t anything to restart. She won the argument.
- Second place goes to Julie. Julie got more psychotic as our time spent together, culminating with her telling me that she was possessed. Usually, that should be enough for anybody to end the relationship, but I kept going, more out of curiosity of what she would do next.
When she scratched a section of my flesh out of my neck, I was no longer curious. I broke it off with her, despite her pleading for me not to, saying she would change.
- Then came Theresa, who was incredibly hot and could bend over and slide her hands underneath her feet. We were having a lot of fun together, but when war broke out for the first time between the U.S. and Iraq, we suddenly discovered that we were very different politically speaking. We started fighting more, and eventually realized we couldn�t talk about anything political.
At a late evening at Denny�s, I said that I couldn�t be with somebody who thought George Bush Sr. had a good sense of where the United States should be heading. She tried to talk me out of it, saying we didn�t need to talk about politics. I held my ground and we split up.
- After that, there was Jennifer, who was already in a relationship with an abusive drunken boyfriend. The details of our breakup are have already been written about.
The basics of the story, for those who don�t want to read the old entry, is that I desperately wanted to continue our relationship, and get her away from the one she was in. She ended up quitting her job with no notice, and left town in the middle of the night. I went crazy for a while.
- Then I met Karen. Our relationship was very easy, and low-key, which I needed after the tumultuous time with Jen. But after two years, Karen showed signs of stagnancy and complacency, and complained about it. Often. Every day was a new laundry list of complaints. �I need to go to the gym. I need to go back to school. I need a better job.�
But she never did any of these things. I tried to encourage her, even going back to school myself. But while I excelled, she dropped out within two weeks, more content to complain about going back to school than actually doing it. I eventually blew up, saying to either do these things she was constantly complaining about, or stop complaining about them. She did neither, and I broke up with her, though she talked me out of it. But her extent of trying to fix her behavior lasted two weeks, and then she just complained about how she needed to change. I finally ended it for good.
- And finally, there was Kimberly. After a long time of being alone and miserable, Kim really pulled me out of a funk. But she was also crazy, and started fights for no reason. Her mind games got worse as our relationship grew longer. But her moments of screwing with my head would only last a day, and then she would go back to being the girl I fell for. So when she finally said she wanted to break up, I thought she would change her mind.
I wrote about this as well, but the short version is that while we had broken up, she was still living at my place. I tried to pretend this was all right, hoping she would change her mind. She didn�t.
So, to summarize, in these six relationships, I broke up with three them, and three of them broke up with me. In every case, the person being dumped didn�t want the relationship to end.
So I suppose I�ve become obvious and have a standard modis operandi.
Let�s mix things up a little.
As I mentioned during the Hawaii trip, The Girlfriend has grown distant to me. I hoped our trip would fix things, but it didn�t. I knew she would want some time to herself when we returned, and tried to give her space. When we first got home, I got into my car and told her to call when she was wanted to see me again.
Three days passed, and I couldn�t stand it. There�s a Judy Blume book called It�s Not the End of the World that I remembered, where two best friends are moving away from each other. They�re both nervous about what will happen.
�Hey,� one girl says, �You know the saying, absence makes the heart grow fonder?�
�I keep thinking of �out of sight, out of mind�,� the other replies.
I was worried that she was growing toward the latter.
So occasionally I would call and suggest an outing for us. She would agree, but when we went out I felt more like I was being tolerated than wanted. I would revert back to giving her space, but the gaps between our talking grew longer. She wasn�t calling or e-mailing. I would discover that she had gone to friend�s houses that was in my neighborhood, but she didn�t call or stop by. And when I did talk to her, she didn�t have anything to say about her behavior as of late.
At first I was sad. Then I got angry. That was a new feeling for me � I had never been angry or frustrated with her before. We don�t fight. We don�t argue. When we are together, it�s usually a lot of fun, even if we�re doing nothing but watching cartoons together. And communication has always been pretty good for us.
What�s worse is that that I�ve been the same since we met. I don�t have mood swings. I don�t keep things bottled up. I�m pretty easy to read. You can put me in the middle of a punk show with tons of beer around, and I�ll act the same way as if we ordered a pizza and watched old Mystery Science Theater tapes. So I don�t know why she�s distant now. Is she antsy? Bored? Did I do something wrong? I have no idea what the problem is, since she�s not opening up to me. This is why I�m angry. If I�m the same as I was eight months ago, then why is she acting differently now?
I found myself sitting around, not using the computer just in case she decided to call, which she never did. As these times would go by, I found myself resenting that I was being so passive. I�ve always been an advocate of communication, and she�s cut me out.
I�ve been told several times that I have very expressive eyes, and you can read my mood pretty easily by my face. If I�m angry, my mouth goes in a hard straight line and I squint. If I�m sad, I do the same, but the corners of my mouth turn down, the center of my forehead wrinkles up, and my eyes are a little bigger. So people who came in to buy books weren�t buying what I said when I answered with the generic �fine, thanks,� when asked how I was doing.
One woman in particular wasn�t having any of it. �You don�t look like you�re fine. You look like you need a hug.�
�Thanks for the offer,� I said, �but I don�t need one.�
�I think you do,� she answered. �Come on. Come over here and give me a hug. What harm could it cause?�
�The harm it could cause,� I said steadily, �is that if I do give you a hug, I�m breaking a very carefully built defense system by admitting something is wrong. And if I do that, I�m probably going to start sobbing for the next twenty minutes as you hold me. And the store closes in fifteen.�
She looked at me carefully. �Okay,� she said finally. �I�ll just take these books, then.�
Finally, for some reason, I decided to start up the computer and see if she was on Instant Messenger. She was. I brought up a few things that had been bothering me, but she wasn�t answering me with any kind of explanation. Finally, I wrote that I guessed I would talk to her later. It seemed obvious that I was upset.
She wrote back, almost immediately, saying goodbye.
That was it. I blew up. �Fuck, woman, what the hell? Why won�t you talk to me?�
�I just don�t know what to say,� she responded.
She has a cartoon postcard at her place, written in that cute girl comic kinda way that involves a girl playing spin the bottle with a boy she likes. She gets to kiss him, but her tells her the next day that he�s going to see somebody else. She reads the old adage about setting something free, and how if it comes back it will be yours forever. She writes a note to that effect.
It�s a terrible example to think of, especially since the girl in question is so oblivious to the nature of the way things work. Still, I inform her that I am setting her free.
I want her to argue. I want her to open up. Instead, she passively agrees.
Fuck.
And even during this conversation, we�re still not fighting. In fact, we�re making jokes and being cute toward one another. None of this is helping. But I don�t take back what I said, and she doesn�t try to talk me out of it. We stop talking at four in the morning, the two of us sounding quite fond of each other. The kind of talk that would make anybody else in the room sick to their stomach.
My cousin bought me this book as a graduation present, probably thinking he was being funny. I had planned to say that I already knew all this stuff, hence why I had survived. But now it just seemed appropriate to read, because that�s what this whole thing is between her and myself � survival.
But we�re still split up. Still, isn�t this what I wanted? We�re still close, we still like each other, and now there aren�t any strings or mores to adhere to. I don�t have to take her into consideration when I make plans, and vice versa. And we�ll still see each other, that is pretty much guaranteed. We�re communicating again. And who knows? Perhaps she will come back. This takes a lot of the pressure off, and that�s good.
Awww, goddamn it.
Fucking goddamn it.
