Breaking Up

There are very few people I know who haven’t tasted the wretched flavor of life’s brutalizing curveball: breaking up. You know, spitting the sheets, dunzo, over, kaput. All us guys have suffered our own serious case of bitch-up-n’-left-phemia. You girls have all experienced the agonizing symptoms of Imma-kill-that-cheating-fuck-ititous. The madness, the delusional thoughts, the mania, the fifth of cheap whiskey coursing through your blood as you make your misery known to all those in your vicinity… We may be separated by creed, race, and religion, but in all of these feelings we are the same, bound to suffer in the name of love. This article is about breaking up, so grab your Ben and Jerry’s, a fifth of Jack Daniels and a box of Kleenex, it’s going to be a long night…

Part One: The First Few Days

So you’ve broken up. You and your significant other have exploded in each other’s faces like a couple of murderous jack-in-the-boxes. You’ve brought name-calling into a whole new dimension, hacking at the other’s feelings like a coked out Sushi chef with a chainsaw. Or perhaps you’ve met at one of the 1 trillion Starbucks stores like the ridiculously fucking mature young adults you are to talk about why “things just aren’t working out”. Whether you are riding high on the raging adrenaline of a break-up fight or surfing the calm wake left by your hug goodbye over a couple soy-macchiatos, in that moment you feel as if nothing in this vicious round ice-cube of a world could hurt you. You are invincible; you are king of O.K. Mountain…. You are sadly so full of shit that it’s coming out of your ears. Sure, you might go out for a few nights and celebrate your newfound freedom, share your bed with an over-perfumed/cologned stranger from the bar, but come morning, with a pounding head, dry mouth, and an urgent feeling that you may need an STD screening, you will find that neither the alcohol or the hooker-in-training laying next to you have stopped your emotionally unstable mind from thinking about the prison of a relationship you just escaped from like Andy Dufresne crawling through a mile of shit to freedom in The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a burning feeling ignited in your gut that second guesses having ever ran away. No matter what you pour down your throat, spread your legs for or desperately tell yourself, the fire seems to grow. Whiskey makes it flare and your pelvic motions only fan the flames. You may have made the biggest mistake any person has ever made anywhere in the entire world.

Part Two: Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

You’ve come to realize you can’t drown their memory. The walls are coming in from all sides, as you slowly come to realize that wherever you run, their memory will be waiting for you. You sulk around by day, can’t helping but think about what they are doing, you close your eyes and see them in your nightmares. It’s like a daylong marathon of Dog the Bounty Hunter except you can’t change the channel and for some reason, you’re being forced to motorboat his wife. It’s at this point that your cell phone and Facebook account become your two worst enemies. You do you best to resist their allure, but alas, you fall victim to your own tortured curiosity. It couldn’t hurt to see what they are up to these days, you tell yourself. You come to their page and see them hanging off the arm of the person you always secretly suspected they wanted to do the boom-boom with while you were dating. With a torrent of acid swirling in your stomach, you slam your laptop shut, put on your sweats, get into bed, and watch P.S. I Love You for the third time that day. Soon the need to contact your ex becomes unbearable. Perhaps the slight vibration in their pocket and your unpunctuated sentence fragments will remind them of better times. You don’t want to seem desperate so you pretend that you accidently sent them a text meant for a friend:

You: “We still hittin’ up the bars this weekend?” (You haven’t been out in weeks)

Them: “who is this?”

(They deleted my fucking number like they deleted me from their awesome life)

You: “Oh sorry. It’s me. I accidently sent that to you ha” (I obviously haven’t deleted your number and that was a complete and utter transparent lie)

Them: “no worries”

(Watch twenty more minutes of P.S. I Love You to see if they text anything else)

You: “So how have you been?” (You don’t want to know)

Them: “REALLY REALLY GOOD! u?”

(Punch the wall, cry into your pillow, pause P.S. I Love You)

You: “That’s awesome. Yea I’m great. Been super busy ya know.” (Haven’t been to class or done anything productive in days)

Them: “Good!”

You: “Yea pretty sweet. So what are you up to?” (They can smell your desperation through the phone)

Them: “Now? I’m just at a friend’s. u?”

(They are having sex with somebody and taking so long to write back cause they only send texts in-between orgasms)

You: “same” (You suck)

Do you feel better? Let me answer that for you, nope! True false or otherwise, they are having a great time without you and look back on your memory with the fondness of a long-since-cured case of pubic lice. In one astonishingly foolish act you have both successfully admitted your desperation and validated their confidence. Congratulations!

Part Three: The Meltdown

A month or two rushes by like Kevin Federline frantically trying to find his way out of Compton. You are beginning to look and feel less and less like a heart broken plus-size clothing model with every passing day. With a new shirt, a shave and a haircut, you muster the courage to venture out on the town with your friends who say, “it will do you some good”. The party is rockin’ and you’re already three drinks in, laughing at jokes, smiling for what feels like your first time… and then… POOF! As if by some form of black evil ex gypsy magic, they appear! The whole room seems to turn in their direction as they stroll in the door. The temperature drops below absolute zero and every happy feeling you’ve ever felt seems to melt away. Like a flash, all the faces swivel and come to rest on you, waiting to read your reaction. You roll up your tongue back into your mouth, wipe the sweat from your brow and give them all a sly smile and a look that you hope says, “psh, totally not a big deal, right?”

But inside there are nuclear missile submarine alarms going off. It’s like the movie U-571 except it’s not Nazis you fear, it’s the prospect of conversing with your ex, and instead of Matthew McConaughey, it’s their eyes that butcher the scene. It’s EX-COM level one and you shake with panic under your mask of calm collectiveness. Your friends look at you as if you are a hand grenade about to explode. They offer to leave with you but your foolish stubbornness will not abide. Regressing, you silently remind yourself that you are indeed King of O.K. Mountain. You make your first mistake when you demand another alcoholic beverage like a drunken prom date. The awkwardness in the room settles in like a buddy who was supposed to stay for a night but three weeks later is still beating off on your couch. The people at the party seem to naturally migrate to either you or your ex’s side of the room, feeling the need to pick a side lest you approach them drunkenly. You see many familiar faces on their side of the room, traitors. Much like the board game Risk: you’re getting betrayed, you’re drunk and you’re not having fun. The alcohol is the enemy and before you know it, rude and bitter comments are flying out of your mouth like Mexicans fleeing from a Food 4 Less when the immigration department shows up.

You have gone too far, drank too much, and thought too little. Despite your friend’s urgent warning not to, you stumble your way over to your ex who, of course, is talking to the person you suspect they left you for. Despite having rudely barged into the conversation your ex’s new suitor politely welcomes you into their discussion. He or she is so charming, so likeable and such a douche. This irritates you further, and before you know it, you have publically announced that your ex is a street walking Ukrainian sex worker who sells heroin and possesses a rare and highly transmittable strain of herpes. Your friends rush over to save you but the damage is done. Bravo, you are officially the biggest loser. And not like the television show, no, everyone just hates you now.

Part Four: The Reset Button

Horror stuck by your recent drunken display, you mope in your shame waiting for death’s sweet release. However, you’re in your twenties and will not die for many years. It’s time to face the music. Though you’re too embarrassed to look at yourself in the mirror, you set out to make things right and offer your apologies. As you walk up to their door you realize that you haven’t been this nervous since you got your first boner/period. The door opens and they look at you as if you’re a malnourished cat vomiting on their doormat. Warily, they welcome you inside. The tension between you is equal to that of two people who barely know each other Skyping for the first time. But no matter how badly you want to, you can’t slam your computer shut and text them saying your Internet is acting up. No, it’s just you and them sitting across from each other, looking at anything and everything else in the room. You comment on their new bedspread, they don’t say anything. After another agonizing silence, you muster all your will power and open your mouth to speak again. Months of feelings and thoughts pour from you, the load on your shoulders lessening with each spoken word. The feeling of relief is euphoric and you’re at last freed from your shackles of despair. Before you know it they are crying, now you start crying and pull them in close. Your tears are their tears as your lips find each other’s for a wet tearful kiss; your rational brain has shut down, you are all id. Articles of clothing fly through the air uncontrollably like Ryan Dunn and the other dude that one really seems to care about. Suddenly everywhere is a bed, even the floor, the wall, the stairs and the washer and dryer are not spared your unholy union. You are King of O.K. Mountain.

So there you lay, sweating and panting on the floor of their bathroom. The slow rise and fall of their chest is the naked poetry that makes the world go round. You are both finally catching your breath when their phone vibrates. She moves her lips as she reads.

With the coolness and matter-of-fact tone typically reserved for conversations regarding the weather, she looks over and says, “You better get going, my boyfriend is on his way over,”

Almost as if you’ve fallen victim to the cosmos’ greatest “JK” of all time, the weight of grief and stress you had shed only moments ago crashes into your soul like a surprise birthday party organized by Satan himself. The love you have just made, your feelings for that person renewed, you cannot take it back! You were so close to being free of their memory, one apology away from making amends, but no, you reached for the “Save” button but your fingers found the power cord and ripped it from the wall. You are resetting and back at square one.

The sign reads “Vacancy” at the Heartbreak Hotel.

You open a bottle of whisky.

You put on your sweats.

You haven’t made a decision that bad since that one thing you did at summer camp but never talk about.