trail the process of dumping
the writings on the wall
The writing on the wall is getting upsettingly noticeable. You wonder if they see it. Maybe they can tell that there aren’t anymore poems or midnight trips fro steak and eggs. Maybe it’s becoming apparent that the sweet nothings are getting thrown out with about as much pepper as a seventh-inning fastball.
You know it’s over. All you can think about is how nice it would be not to have to call this person on the weekends. No worries on Valentines Day. No baubles at Christmas. No birthday dinners and no more stories about their damn family, cars, bands, or other obsessions.
We all want a love that ages like wine. You see an old couple walking across the street that have birthed children and survived war and witnessed everything together.
They have become each other, wrinkled in the same places and sweet in the same spots.
Nobody needs that kind of love, but we all crave it the way a bread-and-water prisoner craves a home cooked meal. We want it the way a middle-schooler wants a car and the way New Yorkers want a Caribbean jaunt during the dead of winter. Because while that kind of enduring love isn’t a necessity, it certainly is something you’d hate to see yourself forever without.
Meanwhile, if you’re most people, you settle for lust. It’s very common human behavior, like eating Triscuits and Snickers at 4 p.m. because you know dinner won’t be until very late.
Besides, lust can feel like love. In fact, in the beginning stages of either carcinoma, you can put a specimen of each under a microscope, and even a specialist can’t say for sure if the biopsy is a malignant love or benign lust. You have to wait three of four months.
So a few moons pass and you realize that you think kindly of your sweetie only when they are actually in the room. But even then they are invading your space. And the suddenly the fact that they breath in and out bothers you.
That’s when you know it is -err, was -lust.
More often than not, rotted lust leaves us saying, “What was I thinking?” But oh those beginnings are wonderful; when nothing make more sense 2 a.m. Saturday than a romp in the shower followed by misusing Hershey’s chocolate syrup and a bag of frozen blueberries.
Still, you know what they say about all good things. Sitting there many months later frantically trying to keep that nagging feeling of emptiness at bay, you realize that somebody is going to have to end it. This time around it’ll have to be you.
The dumper will rack their brain as to where to broach this subject with the dumpee. Maybe in a public place so as not to cause a scene. Maybe over the phone if it was just a short-term affair. Maybe at their place. Maybe in the car. Yeah, a car. One with a police screen between the seats so they can’t strangle you.
Eventually, you meet somewhere. And you say, “I just don’t think we can so this anymore.” In a perfect world, that would be enough. They would shake your hand and drive away and send the stuff you left at their place back via priority mail.
In reality, the first thing that happens after you drop the bomb is that you get asked, “Why?”
And all these thoughts race ‘round your head. Why? Because it was lust and lust feels like love, but lust goes bad like a refrigerator science project. Because you’re very presence has started to bother me. Because when you suggested we go away for the weekend, I thought of changing my mind and moving to Reno. Because you will never get my jokes the way I need you to get them. Because I don’t care about you anymore, and it’s a lie to continue this way.
“This is just a very weird time in my life, and I don’t think I can be what you want in this relationship,” you say. Yeah, that’s safe. Kind of along the lines of, “You’re too good for me.”
“But you’re fine,” they say. And you’re thinking, ‘Christ will you please show a little self respect, call me a bastard or a bitch, slap my face, and leave.’
When you are asked why, it’s basically in the rules that you have to have a ready harmless reason. Except there isn’t one. To the dumpee the only excusable reason for you to get out of a relationship is death, which is why so many girls are in love with movies like titanic or martyrs like James Dean.
Those of us who can’t break up by means of our own death say, “It’s not you, it’s me” or something equally insipid:
I just need some space to figure some things out. I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere. Sometimes you just have these feelings that you can’t explain. I think you are a really rad person. I need you as a friend right now. Like a really really good friend who will never ever call me again.
And then you begin to repeat, “It’s just not working out” as it were an incantation on a par with Kyrie Elieson.
So don’t ask me why it’s over because there is no reason at all. It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s just the way the ball bounced, and it was fun while it lasted. Now please leave me alone.
When you finally get back home to be in peace, you wonder if you should feel guilty. You decide that maybe you should. But you can’t. Because somebody once told you that it just wasn’t working out. And you know that you’ll hear it... and say it again.
The writing on the wall is getting upsettingly noticeable. You wonder if they see it. Maybe they can tell that there aren’t anymore poems or midnight trips fro steak and eggs. Maybe it’s becoming apparent that the sweet nothings are getting thrown out with about as much pepper as a seventh-inning fastball.
You know it’s over. All you can think about is how nice it would be not to have to call this person on the weekends. No worries on Valentines Day. No baubles at Christmas. No birthday dinners and no more stories about their damn family, cars, bands, or other obsessions.
We all want a love that ages like wine. You see an old couple walking across the street that have birthed children and survived war and witnessed everything together.
They have become each other, wrinkled in the same places and sweet in the same spots.
Nobody needs that kind of love, but we all crave it the way a bread-and-water prisoner craves a home cooked meal. We want it the way a middle-schooler wants a car and the way New Yorkers want a Caribbean jaunt during the dead of winter. Because while that kind of enduring love isn’t a necessity, it certainly is something you’d hate to see yourself forever without.
Meanwhile, if you’re most people, you settle for lust. It’s very common human behavior, like eating Triscuits and Snickers at 4 p.m. because you know dinner won’t be until very late.
Besides, lust can feel like love. In fact, in the beginning stages of either carcinoma, you can put a specimen of each under a microscope, and even a specialist can’t say for sure if the biopsy is a malignant love or benign lust. You have to wait three of four months.
So a few moons pass and you realize that you think kindly of your sweetie only when they are actually in the room. But even then they are invading your space. And the suddenly the fact that they breath in and out bothers you.
That’s when you know it is -err, was -lust.
More often than not, rotted lust leaves us saying, “What was I thinking?” But oh those beginnings are wonderful; when nothing make more sense 2 a.m. Saturday than a romp in the shower followed by misusing Hershey’s chocolate syrup and a bag of frozen blueberries.
Still, you know what they say about all good things. Sitting there many months later frantically trying to keep that nagging feeling of emptiness at bay, you realize that somebody is going to have to end it. This time around it’ll have to be you.
The dumper will rack their brain as to where to broach this subject with the dumpee. Maybe in a public place so as not to cause a scene. Maybe over the phone if it was just a short-term affair. Maybe at their place. Maybe in the car. Yeah, a car. One with a police screen between the seats so they can’t strangle you.
Eventually, you meet somewhere. And you say, “I just don’t think we can so this anymore.” In a perfect world, that would be enough. They would shake your hand and drive away and send the stuff you left at their place back via priority mail.
In reality, the first thing that happens after you drop the bomb is that you get asked, “Why?”
And all these thoughts race ‘round your head. Why? Because it was lust and lust feels like love, but lust goes bad like a refrigerator science project. Because you’re very presence has started to bother me. Because when you suggested we go away for the weekend, I thought of changing my mind and moving to Reno. Because you will never get my jokes the way I need you to get them. Because I don’t care about you anymore, and it’s a lie to continue this way.
“This is just a very weird time in my life, and I don’t think I can be what you want in this relationship,” you say. Yeah, that’s safe. Kind of along the lines of, “You’re too good for me.”
“But you’re fine,” they say. And you’re thinking, ‘Christ will you please show a little self respect, call me a bastard or a bitch, slap my face, and leave.’
When you are asked why, it’s basically in the rules that you have to have a ready harmless reason. Except there isn’t one. To the dumpee the only excusable reason for you to get out of a relationship is death, which is why so many girls are in love with movies like titanic or martyrs like James Dean.
Those of us who can’t break up by means of our own death say, “It’s not you, it’s me” or something equally insipid:
I just need some space to figure some things out. I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere. Sometimes you just have these feelings that you can’t explain. I think you are a really rad person. I need you as a friend right now. Like a really really good friend who will never ever call me again.
And then you begin to repeat, “It’s just not working out” as it were an incantation on a par with Kyrie Elieson.
So don’t ask me why it’s over because there is no reason at all. It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s just the way the ball bounced, and it was fun while it lasted. Now please leave me alone.
When you finally get back home to be in peace, you wonder if you should feel guilty. You decide that maybe you should. But you can’t. Because somebody once told you that it just wasn’t working out. And you know that you’ll hear it... and say it again.