Yesterday my really wonderful girlfriend broke up with me. This wasn’t anything unexpected. Early into the relationship I had made sure that
Meg understood that my design and animation career was the priority in my life, and always would be. It just got to a point where, after many months of the same old song, the time I was investing in the really good thing we had going on wasn’t enough. She laughed a little and said that I was right,
artists really do make shitty boyfriends. I asked her to not tell me about the guys that would follow in my footsteps. She said sure, and wished me good luck with this year’s
portfolio.
And that was that.
I’m 23 and too old to ever give anything more drama than it deserves. Meg, thank God, is a logical young lady who has amazing control over her emotional faculties. The breakup felt more like a friendly FYI conversation about “Ok, so do I have to pick up my clothes or do I still get to keep that drawer next to your bed?” and “Alright, so I can still crash on your couch if I get out of the city too late? No? That’s cool, I understand.”
I’ve never had a normal relationship that also, for whatever reason, ended normally. All my breakups have ended in weird, drawn out ways. Stuff like female screaming (which is a very different sound from any other type of screaming), long bouts of
emo music, empty threats in public places, throwing food (really), and burning CDs always seemed like the norm concerning this kind of stuff.
So gosh, for Meg to just understand that she’d have to ditch my ass because I’m so passionate and driven about creating and designing. For her to just make that logical conclusion of, “Well, he always meant well, but he has this other thing going on which takes up 98% percent of his time, leaving me with only 2%, and that isn’t going to work.” For her to just keep stable, make a decision about us, and explain to me the hows and whys of that decision.
It was, well, really fucking cool of her to not go psycho on me.
Maybe a lot of other people would find the specifics of how well the
breakup went to be kind of unimportant. Maybe most people would see the act of getting dumped as the only important detail. That’s not really the case, which is my point with this node and the specific thing I’ve learned from it. Here it is:
You can tell a lot about how much a significant other really loved you by the steps he/she took to play damage control on your bruised ego. Meg had about 100 different ways to really put a knife in my head, whether it would be attacking the quality of my
art, calling me a shitty lover, making fun of the things I told her in confidence, whatever.
I’ve learned that women can be really, really good at cutting into a guy with words when they want to.
My
ex-girlfriend didn’t do any of that shit.
And Boo, if you stumble across
everything2.com one day, and find my nickname among the community members. If you stumble upon my nodes. If you ever find this one node in the gel, and expect some kind of monumental movie-like ending for this piece of writing talking about our breakup. Well Boo, this one’s for you baby:
I could never tell you this to your face because men are stupid animals that can’t express intimate thoughts as well as girls. Instead we write down important things on stupid online journals, hoping you’ll never find them.
Thank you for respecting my life in a way no other person ever has. Thank you for not belittling the things most important to me. When you see those credits roll and my name on those fucking credits, just know that a lot of what I became had to do with the time I spent
in love with you.
It’s impossible for a human being to ever touch another human so perfect and gentle. Imagine my surprise when you did just that while breaking up with my stupid-hyper-creative-ass.