[I am now attempting to go back and tell the whole story of what's gone down these past two weeks. Last week was, without a doubt, the single worst series of days in my life. We're starting with the unfinished tale of the break-up with Writer Guy.]
Sunday
There's a brunch at my house, but I choose to skip it to go hang out with Writer Guy. He's remarkably taciturn. After much berating ("pick at it, mary ann, I promise it'll bleed") he begins break-up talk. He claims he is "disturbed by the people [I] choose to surround [my]self with". Also, I am a dysfunctional girl with dysfunctional friends whose dysfunctional story theater is no longer entertaining to him. I am also pretty, smart, funny and nice.
He began all of this by informing me that he's concluded he's not going to marry me. I think I was supposed to understand from that statement that it was over. Instead I replied that I didn't know we were on a spouse hunt.
Then he says he's not dumping me... yet.
I am rather insulted by his decision to judge my friends. Actually, I am livid. I drive out to the Palisades and stare at them until I am reasonably content that "this too, shall pass" and the rocks will still be there. I really derive great comfort from old rocks. They make me feel like no matter what I do, no matter what has happened or might happen, it's really not that big of a deal. Actually, it's something like this.
I go home and compose a manifesto entitled "The Deal" in which I stop being nice and throw some of the blame for all of this on him. I am still livid about the unkind things he said about my friends, and it motivates me to abandon my casual attitude toward most of his behaviour. I am tired of being the one who is okay all the time. I am weary from the whole relationship. I'm finished with it. The criticism has gotten to be less than constructive and so I let him know how I feel about that.
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Monday
I wake up to a long e mail from Writer Guy. In which he dumps me. Or rather concludes that "At this point I don't think we should continue." I choose to write back. Not sure why still. I make a snide remark about his newfound place in Dysfunctional Story Theater as The Boy Who Dumped Me Via E-mail. He takes that to mean we need to talk in person.
Later I find the charger cable for his camera. So I e mail him to tell him it's here. If it were a t-shirt, I wouldn't have bothered, but the cable seemed rather important.
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Tuesday
While my roommates are in class, he comes over. We talk. It begins poorly. I'm passive agressive, he's making vague statements that I don't care to learn more about. I'm still too busy being mad about his unkind words about my friends to be civil. Except that takes a lot of energy and gets me nowhere. So I try civility. Somewhere along the way we become nice to eachother again. I decide that this really all has nothing to do with me, those are his poor excuses and really this is all about what's wrong with him emotionally speaking. I choose to share this. It's actually well received. I am fairly certain we are going to be good friends by the time he leaves, although he did maintain the Vague Statement Theme he had going and I get the impression that he left a lot unsaid.
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Thursday
I cut off all my hair. I also receive some news that he really needs to hear and that any decent person would deliver in person. We make a lunch date for Friday.
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Friday (Valentine's Day)
I have a three martini lunch in a dark bar on a drizzly day with my x-boyfriend. I deliver the news. It all goes as well as a person could reasonably hope it would. Actually better than that. He actually amends his statements about my friends. I mostly stop being mad about it. As we're leaving, it looks like he might try to kiss me. That would really complicate things. I have no hair to hide behind. So, I hug him. We depart.
Sunday ~ well, Sunday is the beginning of Ice Storm '03. We'll pick up with that part later.
