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100 Things, Day 5
May. 6th, 2012 06:42 pmDay 5: First Heartbreak
Stop me if you've heard this one before... wait, no. You're getting the story again anyway. But hey, raid the liquor cabinet to entertain yourself, k?
I'm trying to avoid too many of the obvious life-changers because they're obvious, but some really should be mentioned. I'm going to try and dole them out amongst the other moments though, so you don't end up having to talk me off a ledge or something. (Not gonna happen: heights are bad!)
The first time I had my heart broken was not the first time I broke up with someone, nor was it even a break-up exactly, as that would come later, but it was the moment I realized that what I'd hoped for wasn't going to happen and at that moment in time, no one believed me when I said the end was near.
( Disclaimer. )
ExB, as we'll call him, was pretty much a drama queen. It's why I didn't take him seriously when he played the you're awesome card, even if it was worded differently. It took quite a few phone calls and some serious lapses in judgment for me to take the bait and even then it was knowing full well that this dude came with some serious baggage.
Serious Baggage is code, of course, for a Significant Ex of his own. Since ExB was older than I was, his ex was pretty friggin' important. The two were serious and engaged and a wedding date was set and everything. I'm a little fuzzy on the details these days, but I believe she cheated and then decided that breaking up was the way to go. So, yeah. He got dumped.
And yes, I knew this going in. Ah, the cluelessness of youth.
So one weekend he disappeared. Full on radio silence, which was a bit weird for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he'd bailed on a phone call and he was always going on about me not calling enough (...yes.), and he wasn't at work. Couldn't get a hold of him in any way. An then he comes back and doesn't make a big deal about his lost weekend so I don't either.
It's winter time and other than him going off the grid for that weekend, things have been going well. I remember the day I got the call had been a pretty good one up until that point, because that's always how these things go. I remember being outside and Mums calls me to answer the phone. It was Cass, and that wasn't all that surprising. If I was worried about ExB's disappearance, she was positively frantic. She'll deny it to this day, but I (and everyone ever involved in our group at the time) would swear she was nursing a serious crush on him at the time.
There's a certain hitch in someone's voice when they're calling to tell you bad news, and with Cass there was always a way to tell when she'd told you everything and when she hadn't. I've been fairly good at getting her to spill her guts over the years, but there's always a bit of hoop jumping to get it done. Double this when she was a teenager. I don't remember how exactly it came up, whether she came right out with the "I have bad news" or if she chickened out at the last minute and I had to drag it out of her. I want to say it was the latter, but that might simply be because I usually had to do so, knowing it's the way the game was played.
Either way, the sun is fading when she tells me she found out where ExB went when he disappeared. I'm intrigued by her sluethiness. Do tell.
And so she does with a minimal amount of prodding at this point. That much I do recall.
She reminds me of his ex and how they were engaged and I nod and make the "get on with it" hand gestures even though we're on the phone. Well, the weekend he went missing was the weekend they were supposed to get married.
oh.
Well. That's... to be expected, I decide. That day was supposed to change his life, so it makes sense he'd need some alone time to process it.
There's more, she says.
It turns out she found this out by accident, sort of. He was talking to her about cleaning his apartment and having to replace some CD of his. She asked what happened and he got cagey. Drama queens know when other drama queens are sitting on some serious drama. Like calls to like and all that and once you realize someone is hiding something from you, well... you dig in.
Yeah. The weekend he went missing, he destroyed his apartment. Went completely batshit crazy. Anything that still reminded him of her? Toast. Things he liked even if they had nothing to do with her? Also toast. Fire sale, everything must be destroyed.
Then he continued to crawl into a bottle and lost what was left of his damn mind.
She tells me this and I do that extremely slow blink you sometimes see people do when they're trying to process something that will not compute. Will not compute. And then it does.
And you slide to the floor because your legs turn to jelly. You might drop the phone for a second, but it's okay because you can still hear every word. And each word destroys whatever little picture of the future you'd pieced together in your head over time. In one small conversation everything has changed.
"But then he realized he still has you." Added as an afterthought then, and probably when he said it as well.
The light outside has faded completely and you never bothered to turn on the light in your room, so it's full dark. You turn the phone off and leave it outside the room where your brother promptly claims it and runs away with it for the night.
I'm still on the floor, the lights are still off, and I turn on Stonehenge, my stereo. I put my Billie Myers CD on repeat and basically listen to two songs on repeat for the next several hours as I tried to sort out what the fuck just happened.
In retrospect it's all very easy to see just how much of a clusterfuck this was from the start and how there was no possible other outcome once everything was in motion. But at the time I couldn't see that. It didn't help that everyone else who heard about this acted like it wasn't a deal breaker, like the fact that he trashed his apartment wasn't a sign that dude was still not over the ex and if he wasn't over her to that extent there was no real room for me in his life, at least not the way he'd invited me in.
I'd like to say it was all people my age or younger giving me this stupid advice, but no. I'm not sure if it's just a case of not wanting to upset someone so you tell them what you think they need to hear or if they honestly thought things would somehow magically improve.
They didn't. But it wasn't the actual breakup later that did my heart in, it was the moment I realized that for all his words to the contrary, this, whatever this could have been, would never actually happen. He did his best to convince us both otherwise, but I think he's the only one who believed him even then. This isn't to say I didn't retire once more to my room when I was unceremoniously dumped via an email even though he could have done so in person (oh that's a fun story) because I assure you, I most certainly did. But that moment of having my heart seem to shatter into a million pieces didn't happen then because it had already happened.
ExB provided quite a few stories during his short stint in my life. He won't go down as the most dramatic of the exes, simply because he never uttered the phrase, "did I ever tell you about the time I built a bomb?" but he ranks right up there.
Oh, and I feel I should mention this: At the time I was sure there'd never be a time when this memory didn't hurt but of course I was wrong. Which was a nice thing to realize the last time I thought about this and realized that time had actually managed to heal a wound and that saying wasn't just a crock. Who knew? But for years I couldn't hear Opposites Attract or A Few Words Too Many without being thrown right back on the floor, having my heart ripped out all over again. Which was useful at times and completely inconvenient at others.
Want to play along musically?
Billie Myers: First Time.
Opposites Attract.
A Few Words Too Many.
Stop me if you've heard this one before... wait, no. You're getting the story again anyway. But hey, raid the liquor cabinet to entertain yourself, k?
I'm trying to avoid too many of the obvious life-changers because they're obvious, but some really should be mentioned. I'm going to try and dole them out amongst the other moments though, so you don't end up having to talk me off a ledge or something. (Not gonna happen: heights are bad!)
The first time I had my heart broken was not the first time I broke up with someone, nor was it even a break-up exactly, as that would come later, but it was the moment I realized that what I'd hoped for wasn't going to happen and at that moment in time, no one believed me when I said the end was near.
( Disclaimer. )
ExB, as we'll call him, was pretty much a drama queen. It's why I didn't take him seriously when he played the you're awesome card, even if it was worded differently. It took quite a few phone calls and some serious lapses in judgment for me to take the bait and even then it was knowing full well that this dude came with some serious baggage.
Serious Baggage is code, of course, for a Significant Ex of his own. Since ExB was older than I was, his ex was pretty friggin' important. The two were serious and engaged and a wedding date was set and everything. I'm a little fuzzy on the details these days, but I believe she cheated and then decided that breaking up was the way to go. So, yeah. He got dumped.
And yes, I knew this going in. Ah, the cluelessness of youth.
So one weekend he disappeared. Full on radio silence, which was a bit weird for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he'd bailed on a phone call and he was always going on about me not calling enough (...yes.), and he wasn't at work. Couldn't get a hold of him in any way. An then he comes back and doesn't make a big deal about his lost weekend so I don't either.
It's winter time and other than him going off the grid for that weekend, things have been going well. I remember the day I got the call had been a pretty good one up until that point, because that's always how these things go. I remember being outside and Mums calls me to answer the phone. It was Cass, and that wasn't all that surprising. If I was worried about ExB's disappearance, she was positively frantic. She'll deny it to this day, but I (and everyone ever involved in our group at the time) would swear she was nursing a serious crush on him at the time.
There's a certain hitch in someone's voice when they're calling to tell you bad news, and with Cass there was always a way to tell when she'd told you everything and when she hadn't. I've been fairly good at getting her to spill her guts over the years, but there's always a bit of hoop jumping to get it done. Double this when she was a teenager. I don't remember how exactly it came up, whether she came right out with the "I have bad news" or if she chickened out at the last minute and I had to drag it out of her. I want to say it was the latter, but that might simply be because I usually had to do so, knowing it's the way the game was played.
Either way, the sun is fading when she tells me she found out where ExB went when he disappeared. I'm intrigued by her sluethiness. Do tell.
And so she does with a minimal amount of prodding at this point. That much I do recall.
She reminds me of his ex and how they were engaged and I nod and make the "get on with it" hand gestures even though we're on the phone. Well, the weekend he went missing was the weekend they were supposed to get married.
oh.
Well. That's... to be expected, I decide. That day was supposed to change his life, so it makes sense he'd need some alone time to process it.
There's more, she says.
It turns out she found this out by accident, sort of. He was talking to her about cleaning his apartment and having to replace some CD of his. She asked what happened and he got cagey. Drama queens know when other drama queens are sitting on some serious drama. Like calls to like and all that and once you realize someone is hiding something from you, well... you dig in.
Yeah. The weekend he went missing, he destroyed his apartment. Went completely batshit crazy. Anything that still reminded him of her? Toast. Things he liked even if they had nothing to do with her? Also toast. Fire sale, everything must be destroyed.
Then he continued to crawl into a bottle and lost what was left of his damn mind.
She tells me this and I do that extremely slow blink you sometimes see people do when they're trying to process something that will not compute. Will not compute. And then it does.
And you slide to the floor because your legs turn to jelly. You might drop the phone for a second, but it's okay because you can still hear every word. And each word destroys whatever little picture of the future you'd pieced together in your head over time. In one small conversation everything has changed.
"But then he realized he still has you." Added as an afterthought then, and probably when he said it as well.
The light outside has faded completely and you never bothered to turn on the light in your room, so it's full dark. You turn the phone off and leave it outside the room where your brother promptly claims it and runs away with it for the night.
I'm still on the floor, the lights are still off, and I turn on Stonehenge, my stereo. I put my Billie Myers CD on repeat and basically listen to two songs on repeat for the next several hours as I tried to sort out what the fuck just happened.
In retrospect it's all very easy to see just how much of a clusterfuck this was from the start and how there was no possible other outcome once everything was in motion. But at the time I couldn't see that. It didn't help that everyone else who heard about this acted like it wasn't a deal breaker, like the fact that he trashed his apartment wasn't a sign that dude was still not over the ex and if he wasn't over her to that extent there was no real room for me in his life, at least not the way he'd invited me in.
I'd like to say it was all people my age or younger giving me this stupid advice, but no. I'm not sure if it's just a case of not wanting to upset someone so you tell them what you think they need to hear or if they honestly thought things would somehow magically improve.
They didn't. But it wasn't the actual breakup later that did my heart in, it was the moment I realized that for all his words to the contrary, this, whatever this could have been, would never actually happen. He did his best to convince us both otherwise, but I think he's the only one who believed him even then. This isn't to say I didn't retire once more to my room when I was unceremoniously dumped via an email even though he could have done so in person (oh that's a fun story) because I assure you, I most certainly did. But that moment of having my heart seem to shatter into a million pieces didn't happen then because it had already happened.
ExB provided quite a few stories during his short stint in my life. He won't go down as the most dramatic of the exes, simply because he never uttered the phrase, "did I ever tell you about the time I built a bomb?" but he ranks right up there.
Oh, and I feel I should mention this: At the time I was sure there'd never be a time when this memory didn't hurt but of course I was wrong. Which was a nice thing to realize the last time I thought about this and realized that time had actually managed to heal a wound and that saying wasn't just a crock. Who knew? But for years I couldn't hear Opposites Attract or A Few Words Too Many without being thrown right back on the floor, having my heart ripped out all over again. Which was useful at times and completely inconvenient at others.
Want to play along musically?
Billie Myers: First Time.
Opposites Attract.
A Few Words Too Many.
