WORDS: BRITT GEBKA
Most girls are reminded of their old boyfriends when they hear a certain song or see the same car he had drive by. Yesterday I hear the TV describing a serial killer as “charming, cold, manipulating, and emotionless” and I can’t help but immediately think that sounds just like my ex-boyfriend and get a little choked up thinking of the good times .
We broke up last week. And the week before that. And about once during every three week interval for the last 18 months. But this time I swear it’s going to be different. When I wrote that break up email about blocking him online I REALLY meant it, way more than the 30 other emails in my outbox that promised this was really the last time and I was getting my heart locket back from him or I was calling the cops.
I really shouldn’t be surprised with any of this- there were quite a few indications from the start that this relationship would not be lasting until we were half deaf and playing bridge at a retirement home in Florida. Like when I woke up in his bed to his ex-girlfriend throwing my shoes in the street , trying to break into his room, and somehow finding time to text him that I had big thighs with the hand that was not punching holes into the door. Or when he went to Germany for spring break and came back a week later with some souvenir beer steins and a German girl named Ojuna. Now, a year and half later at 4 am, as he is littering the lawn with the contents of my suitcase and setting fire to my childhood blanket and throwing it in a tree, I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I have seen relationships more stable than this on Maury, and those people were probably also cousins or had secret lives as cross dressing prostitutes.
So it’s over. Give me a week and a shaggy haired borderline anorexic boy to rebound fuck in a bathroom somewhere, and I’ll be fine. I like to think of my break up grieving process in terms of how I would respond in completely unrealistic hypothetical situations, like lets say he’s drowning and there’s a snack bar next to the lake and I’m pretty hungry. Right now I’m still maybe going to throw a life preserver to him and call 911 before I get in line for some fries. By next week I’m hoping to be at the stage where I say fuck it and eat my hot do g with extra ketchup as I watch his hand slowly sink below the water and his body bag get carted off to the morgue. Then I know I’ll really be on my way to a healthy recovery . But for now I’m going to just send hate emails from my bed and avoid watching any shows about calculating men going on killing rampages in small Midwestern towns, because it just hurts too much.
