The Oracle
stage 2: yearning and searching
On the journey homeward, I recline back in my seat, close my eyes, and think about how it used to be, when we would see each other again after even a brief separation...smiles and exclamations and long hugs and your mouth on mine. I arrive home to find you already asleep, and in the morning I wake to an empty bed. I know that you are busy and must have things to do, so I don't know why this hurts me so much. Maybe because it's the first morning we've had in a long time that is just us. Maybe because, more than anything, I miss the mornings when we would lie in bed together for hours, curled up as we drifted in and out of sleep. And maybe it's because it feels, lately, as if you can't wait to get out of bed, which I take personally, even when I know it's not, which just makes me feel even worse. Why do I have to take everything so personally all the goddamn time? I lie in bed for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, and I repeat the promise I made to myself the night before: I'll pretend to be happy and charming and upbeat, all the time, even when I don't feel like it (especially when I don't feel like it). I'll concentrate on being easy to be around, remind myself that I've never gotten love when I complained for more. The Relationship Lessons of Oliver Twist. And if I feel like crying, I'll only do it quickly, and privately - a sharp swift burst of it to get it all out, and then I'll just stand back up again, swipe the proof away from my cheeks, and get on with it. So I jump out of bed, call out a breezy hello to you as I stroll into the kitchen and set about making myself a cup of coffee. Try not to think about the way you used to always bring me coffee in bed, and how, one morning not long ago, out of an effort to be more reinforcing of the things I did want instead of nagging about the things I didn't, I told you how much I loved it when you brought me coffee in bed, how it made me feel so loved by you... And how it seemed that after I told you that, you just didn't do it anymore. It probably wasn't on purpose, I swiftly correct myself, as I grab a mug from the cupboard. He's been really busy, remember? He probably doesn't even have time to make himself coffee. “Do you want some coffee?” I ask you. “No, thank you. I already made myself some.” Nodding, I take my hot mug full of coffee and carry it back to our bedroom. Placing it on the sink in the adjoining bathroom, I set about getting ready for the day. You follow me in, plop down on the bed, and play with your phone as I put on my makeup. I ask how your day was yesterday. You mention that your original plans were canceled, so instead you circled back and had coffee with Sarah. Sarah, I repeat silently to myself. I have never heard you mention her before. Who. THE FUCK. Is Sarah?! “Have I met Sarah?” I ask casually, as I swipe blush onto the apples of my cheeks. “No,” you reply. “I don't think so? She's a girl from work.” “Ah.” I catch my own eyes in the mirror for just a beat. Just a split second. Don't, I warn myself. “Tell me about her.” I listen as you ramble off her duties at work: she works in PR, she went to a big annual gala with all the other PR girls this past weekend, etc. And the whole time I am dying to ask if she's pretty. I am dying to ask if you think she's funny. Dying to ask why you are so busy that you can't even find time to send a meaningful text to your girlfriend when she's away for a week, but you have plenty of time to meet up with a girl from work on a Saturday afternoon for fucking coffee. But I don't, because I know I am just being irrational and that you are often friends with the girls you work with and that you would never, ever cheat. I don't, because maybe I don't want an answer to that certain kind of fatal wonder: would it be better to know you are interested in someone else and so that's why things are so hard and strange between us now, or to know that you are not and to have to still be mystified as to how we got so far from where we used to be? I don't, because I'm supposed to be easy, breezy, and light. I swallow the hope that has been sitting, perched, at the back of my throat – the kind I have every weekend morning now, when I wake up and wonder if, today, maybe todaaay! you'll want to spend the day together - and ask what you want to do today. You put your phone in your pocket and tell me you're meeting a friend this morning. I smile again, dig my own phone out of my pocket, and tell you that I'm meeting a friend for breakfast. It's a lie, and I feel awful for telling it, but in the split second between hoping that you'll answer that you want to spend the day with me and hearing you say that you already made plans, I know that I simply cannot stand one more morning of watching you leave while I wait here for you to come back. You ask if I want to walk out together. I smile as I swallow down the last of my coffee and then say, “Sure.” My walk is purposefully jaunty, and I call back a goodbye as we arrive at our cars. No kiss, no hug. Just a “See ya” as we both unlock our cars and get in. I allow myself one great gulping cry - a swift sharp burst of it, hard and guttural - as I pull out of the parking lot and onto the main road. It occurs to me as I make my turn to nowhere that it is exactly the way I've always cried when it came to death.
- from the story "As We Lay Dying", from the book all the things you never knew
-------------------------
"Who. THE FUCK. Is Sarah?!"
For the rest of my life, I will never, ever forget thinking that. Standing at the bathroom vanity, the lights reflecting bright in my eyes as I swished the rough bristles of my makeup brush against my cheeks, I felt my heart race for just a moment. Was this really fucking happening? It all felt so ludicrous. I barely became jealous, had never really been faced with the reality that a boyfriend could betray me in that manner. I’ve never suspected anything untoward from any of my partners...except for then, except for that moment. But everything else between us felt so crazy, so unbelievable, I remember telling myself. Why would I think that this wouldn't be happening?
"I bet you a million dollars that they'll start dating," I told Katy through my tears, the night I left him. And, later, Karah and Chelsea. And Erica. "That's the worst part. I know him so well that I can already tell who his next girlfriend will be."
I knew because Sarah had adopted a rescue, a pit bull mix, just like Chris. I knew because I had seen a picture of her, and knew, just by looking at her, that she was his type. I knew because, after the morning that I wrote about in the above, he kept slipping her into conversations, as if daring me to ask about her again. Until I finally did, and he tried to make me feel crazy for doing so. Which only made me suspect even more that there was more to his "professional" relationship to her than he was admitting.
And I was right.
-------------------------
One sunny afternoon this past summer, I joked with a group of friends that I wasn’t the type to stay friends with my exes...that the term The Bitter End always perfectly fit because I would fight so hard for our relationship right up to the end, and so when I finally did give up? It - and I - was bitter.
With Chris, I hadn't wanted it to be like that. I had this thing in me where I just wanted to be Good. Even after - and maybe because - he showed me that he had it in him to be unnecessarily cold and cruel, I still just wanted to make sure that I did what I could to live on in peace. To do The Right Thing, even if I wasn’t going to get that back. I didn't fuck him over by messing up the apartment or taking his things when I moved out (I even left him with a bunch of stuff of mine that I knew he liked and would use...which I later came to regret, but whatever). I didn’t rip on him in public forums. I didn’t trash talk him to friends. I accepted my mistakes and I tried to accept his, and concentrated on salvaging whatever forgiveness and goodwill I had left.
And every once in a while, something would come across my doorstep that I'd recommend him for. I did this because I'd like to believe that I'm not a vindictive person, and I try hard not to hold onto hard feelings. So when I was chatting online with my friend Jeremy, who was organizing a dope event in the TC and recruiting potential presenters for it, I recommended Chris and offered to dig up links to his social media accounts so Jeremy could check him out. Fulfilling this was harder than I expected…I had long gone radio silent on Chris, defriending, unfollowing, and generally hiding away any online reminders of him or. Searching for his Twitter profile, I clicked on a match and skimmed the first few tweets before I copied the link. In doing so, I noticed a particular Twitter handle.
Sarah. I felt my face grow hot, and then I shook my head to myself. They work together, I reminded myself. Don't click on it. Don't be the crazy ex. Just copy the link to his profile and move on.
But, feeling my gut churn in the same way it does when you walk into your boss' office and you already can tell you're in trouble, I clicked on the handle and skimmed her Twitter profile. The first evidence was an Instagram photo of her dog and Chris' dog Ella. I could tell by the carpet and the couch in the photo that they were in Chris' apartment. So what? I tried to tell myself. Maybe they were just hanging out there, having a dog playdate or something. But deep down, I knew what I would find if I went to her Instagram feed. So I drew a deep breath and clicked the link.
The caption to this read, "breakfast in bed from my fav lil' dude."
THAT'S MY FUCKING WHALE MUG! I found myself thinking wildly. That’s the mug that Chris and his son bought for ME, to surprise ME after a trip to Target one ordinary day, because they knew how much I loved whales. Chris used to bring me coffee in it almost every single morning. When I moved my stuff out that one awful Friday, I thought about taking it with me, but didn’t, because I knew it would be too hard to look at it every day and remember that. So I left it, figuring that he would just trash it later when he got home. And now he was using it to surprise his new girlfriend with having his son bring her “breakfast in bed”?!
Gross.
The best (read: worst) part were the timestamps. The one above was from January or February, which means that she had both met his son and was sleeping over (if not living there already, which is, in fact, evidenced by later photos) about 4 months after we broke up. Which, if you take into account Chris' average for relationship pacing, it means that they had to have started dating maybe one, two months after we broke up.
--------------------------
The thing about it is…I broke up with him. I left him. Sometimes I still have to remind myself of that. He had every right to move on, I tried to tell myself, right before I broke down into torrential tears. And I should have expected it. With everything I had learned about him, it should not have been a surprise in the least.
Almost a year ago, I was floored when I received a Facebook message from a girl named Danielle. A tenative message, it sounded so familar...and then I realized that it was the exact same thing that I probably would have written if I had been in her place. For weeks I had been praying for peace…just something, anything, to help me believe that I done the right thing, that I hadn't mistakenly destroyed what I had once thought was the best thing to ever come into my life. And, with her message, it looked like it had finally arrived. But I was also flabbergasted because, up until that point, I had no idea that she had even existed.
When Chris and I were together, both he and his friends made it sound like he had been single forever. I can still remember a conversation with one of his female friends at Bryant Lake Bowl a few weeks after we started dating: She had gushed over and over about how, for so long, Chris had waited to meet someone special. "He even said that to me when we met for coffee a couple months ago…"All I want is to meet someone special."And now here I was! seemed to be the unspoken end to that story. I had absolutely no idea that he had recently been in a serious relationship with Danielle less than three months before we met….a relationship so serious that she had been ready to renovate her house to make more space for him and his son when they all moved in together.
She helped me put the pieces together by relating her own experience, which was so eerily similar that it reminded me of two friends of mine who share the same shitty ex, and how, after finally getting together over a happy hour, they found out that he had sent them each the same text after their respective break-ups - "Standing in the middle of the grocery store right now, crying. God, this is so hard." It would have been hilarious, the way Chris had pulled the same bait and switch act on both of us, if it hadn't all been so incredibly sad.
For the past year, I've struggled with figuring out how I was going to trust myself again. After being tricked so badly by someone I had loved, how was I ever going to be in another relationship and not be suspicious of every single thing they said or did? The answer, I told myself at one point, was that I had to believe that, at some level, there was a part of him that was decent and good, that did really love me at one point. I really wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that the person I had loved so much had, at some point, been worthy of so much devotion. That all of it hadn't been just some mirage.
Finding out about Sarah, though, dissolved that entirely. And not because he got a new girlfriend…because his being with Sarah so soon after we died confirms what I had long suspected but also dreaded: That the man I had believed to be good and decent and worthy of grace was really just a selfish coward.
To put it succinctly: The guy's a total dick.
And my goodwill? Has officially been spent.
--------------------------
I'm sure Sarah is an absolutely lovely person. That's the ironic thing about Chris - knowing Danielle as well as I do now, I can confidently say that the one thing Chris has going for him is his excellent taste in women. I'm sure she's blissfully happy with Chris and his son and their dogs, and I would not wish to strip her of that bliss. It's pretty amazing, when you're in it.
But that's for her. Not for him.
For a short time after I found out about Sarah, there was this deep, down and dirty part of me that wanted to rage and rail against him, that wanted to release every ounce of Hulk Rage I felt and do anything I could to ruin his life. Because I hadn't done that before. I know you don't deserve a medal when and if you act like a grown-up after a break-up, but goddamn it…he went out of his way to hurt me in various petty, cruel, and juvenile ways, and I didn't do any of that stuff to him, and now this. I wanted to out him. I even wrote this incredibly satisfying, brilliantly passive-aggressive, completely sarcastic and hilarious part about how I'm sure Sarah makes Chris happy in certain ways because (insert dirty laundry here that I'm sure she takes of now that I no longer have to, etc). And that shit? Felt GOOD when I was writing it.
But the thing is, even though I no longer feel any duty or obligation to be kind or gracious, I'm still better than that.
And despite all my faults and mistakes, I'm still better than him.
The least of which?
I wouldn't have kept the whale mug around after I got a new boyfriend.
On the journey homeward, I recline back in my seat, close my eyes, and think about how it used to be, when we would see each other again after even a brief separation...smiles and exclamations and long hugs and your mouth on mine. I arrive home to find you already asleep, and in the morning I wake to an empty bed. I know that you are busy and must have things to do, so I don't know why this hurts me so much. Maybe because it's the first morning we've had in a long time that is just us. Maybe because, more than anything, I miss the mornings when we would lie in bed together for hours, curled up as we drifted in and out of sleep. And maybe it's because it feels, lately, as if you can't wait to get out of bed, which I take personally, even when I know it's not, which just makes me feel even worse. Why do I have to take everything so personally all the goddamn time? I lie in bed for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, and I repeat the promise I made to myself the night before: I'll pretend to be happy and charming and upbeat, all the time, even when I don't feel like it (especially when I don't feel like it). I'll concentrate on being easy to be around, remind myself that I've never gotten love when I complained for more. The Relationship Lessons of Oliver Twist. And if I feel like crying, I'll only do it quickly, and privately - a sharp swift burst of it to get it all out, and then I'll just stand back up again, swipe the proof away from my cheeks, and get on with it. So I jump out of bed, call out a breezy hello to you as I stroll into the kitchen and set about making myself a cup of coffee. Try not to think about the way you used to always bring me coffee in bed, and how, one morning not long ago, out of an effort to be more reinforcing of the things I did want instead of nagging about the things I didn't, I told you how much I loved it when you brought me coffee in bed, how it made me feel so loved by you... And how it seemed that after I told you that, you just didn't do it anymore. It probably wasn't on purpose, I swiftly correct myself, as I grab a mug from the cupboard. He's been really busy, remember? He probably doesn't even have time to make himself coffee. “Do you want some coffee?” I ask you. “No, thank you. I already made myself some.” Nodding, I take my hot mug full of coffee and carry it back to our bedroom. Placing it on the sink in the adjoining bathroom, I set about getting ready for the day. You follow me in, plop down on the bed, and play with your phone as I put on my makeup. I ask how your day was yesterday. You mention that your original plans were canceled, so instead you circled back and had coffee with Sarah. Sarah, I repeat silently to myself. I have never heard you mention her before. Who. THE FUCK. Is Sarah?! “Have I met Sarah?” I ask casually, as I swipe blush onto the apples of my cheeks. “No,” you reply. “I don't think so? She's a girl from work.” “Ah.” I catch my own eyes in the mirror for just a beat. Just a split second. Don't, I warn myself. “Tell me about her.” I listen as you ramble off her duties at work: she works in PR, she went to a big annual gala with all the other PR girls this past weekend, etc. And the whole time I am dying to ask if she's pretty. I am dying to ask if you think she's funny. Dying to ask why you are so busy that you can't even find time to send a meaningful text to your girlfriend when she's away for a week, but you have plenty of time to meet up with a girl from work on a Saturday afternoon for fucking coffee. But I don't, because I know I am just being irrational and that you are often friends with the girls you work with and that you would never, ever cheat. I don't, because maybe I don't want an answer to that certain kind of fatal wonder: would it be better to know you are interested in someone else and so that's why things are so hard and strange between us now, or to know that you are not and to have to still be mystified as to how we got so far from where we used to be? I don't, because I'm supposed to be easy, breezy, and light. I swallow the hope that has been sitting, perched, at the back of my throat – the kind I have every weekend morning now, when I wake up and wonder if, today, maybe todaaay! you'll want to spend the day together - and ask what you want to do today. You put your phone in your pocket and tell me you're meeting a friend this morning. I smile again, dig my own phone out of my pocket, and tell you that I'm meeting a friend for breakfast. It's a lie, and I feel awful for telling it, but in the split second between hoping that you'll answer that you want to spend the day with me and hearing you say that you already made plans, I know that I simply cannot stand one more morning of watching you leave while I wait here for you to come back. You ask if I want to walk out together. I smile as I swallow down the last of my coffee and then say, “Sure.” My walk is purposefully jaunty, and I call back a goodbye as we arrive at our cars. No kiss, no hug. Just a “See ya” as we both unlock our cars and get in. I allow myself one great gulping cry - a swift sharp burst of it, hard and guttural - as I pull out of the parking lot and onto the main road. It occurs to me as I make my turn to nowhere that it is exactly the way I've always cried when it came to death.
- from the story "As We Lay Dying", from the book all the things you never knew
-------------------------
"Who. THE FUCK. Is Sarah?!"
For the rest of my life, I will never, ever forget thinking that. Standing at the bathroom vanity, the lights reflecting bright in my eyes as I swished the rough bristles of my makeup brush against my cheeks, I felt my heart race for just a moment. Was this really fucking happening? It all felt so ludicrous. I barely became jealous, had never really been faced with the reality that a boyfriend could betray me in that manner. I’ve never suspected anything untoward from any of my partners...except for then, except for that moment. But everything else between us felt so crazy, so unbelievable, I remember telling myself. Why would I think that this wouldn't be happening?
"I bet you a million dollars that they'll start dating," I told Katy through my tears, the night I left him. And, later, Karah and Chelsea. And Erica. "That's the worst part. I know him so well that I can already tell who his next girlfriend will be."
I knew because Sarah had adopted a rescue, a pit bull mix, just like Chris. I knew because I had seen a picture of her, and knew, just by looking at her, that she was his type. I knew because, after the morning that I wrote about in the above, he kept slipping her into conversations, as if daring me to ask about her again. Until I finally did, and he tried to make me feel crazy for doing so. Which only made me suspect even more that there was more to his "professional" relationship to her than he was admitting.
And I was right.
-------------------------
One sunny afternoon this past summer, I joked with a group of friends that I wasn’t the type to stay friends with my exes...that the term The Bitter End always perfectly fit because I would fight so hard for our relationship right up to the end, and so when I finally did give up? It - and I - was bitter.
With Chris, I hadn't wanted it to be like that. I had this thing in me where I just wanted to be Good. Even after - and maybe because - he showed me that he had it in him to be unnecessarily cold and cruel, I still just wanted to make sure that I did what I could to live on in peace. To do The Right Thing, even if I wasn’t going to get that back. I didn't fuck him over by messing up the apartment or taking his things when I moved out (I even left him with a bunch of stuff of mine that I knew he liked and would use...which I later came to regret, but whatever). I didn’t rip on him in public forums. I didn’t trash talk him to friends. I accepted my mistakes and I tried to accept his, and concentrated on salvaging whatever forgiveness and goodwill I had left.
And every once in a while, something would come across my doorstep that I'd recommend him for. I did this because I'd like to believe that I'm not a vindictive person, and I try hard not to hold onto hard feelings. So when I was chatting online with my friend Jeremy, who was organizing a dope event in the TC and recruiting potential presenters for it, I recommended Chris and offered to dig up links to his social media accounts so Jeremy could check him out. Fulfilling this was harder than I expected…I had long gone radio silent on Chris, defriending, unfollowing, and generally hiding away any online reminders of him or. Searching for his Twitter profile, I clicked on a match and skimmed the first few tweets before I copied the link. In doing so, I noticed a particular Twitter handle.
Sarah. I felt my face grow hot, and then I shook my head to myself. They work together, I reminded myself. Don't click on it. Don't be the crazy ex. Just copy the link to his profile and move on.
But, feeling my gut churn in the same way it does when you walk into your boss' office and you already can tell you're in trouble, I clicked on the handle and skimmed her Twitter profile. The first evidence was an Instagram photo of her dog and Chris' dog Ella. I could tell by the carpet and the couch in the photo that they were in Chris' apartment. So what? I tried to tell myself. Maybe they were just hanging out there, having a dog playdate or something. But deep down, I knew what I would find if I went to her Instagram feed. So I drew a deep breath and clicked the link.
The caption to this read, "breakfast in bed from my fav lil' dude."THAT'S MY FUCKING WHALE MUG! I found myself thinking wildly. That’s the mug that Chris and his son bought for ME, to surprise ME after a trip to Target one ordinary day, because they knew how much I loved whales. Chris used to bring me coffee in it almost every single morning. When I moved my stuff out that one awful Friday, I thought about taking it with me, but didn’t, because I knew it would be too hard to look at it every day and remember that. So I left it, figuring that he would just trash it later when he got home. And now he was using it to surprise his new girlfriend with having his son bring her “breakfast in bed”?!
Gross.
The best (read: worst) part were the timestamps. The one above was from January or February, which means that she had both met his son and was sleeping over (if not living there already, which is, in fact, evidenced by later photos) about 4 months after we broke up. Which, if you take into account Chris' average for relationship pacing, it means that they had to have started dating maybe one, two months after we broke up.
--------------------------
The thing about it is…I broke up with him. I left him. Sometimes I still have to remind myself of that. He had every right to move on, I tried to tell myself, right before I broke down into torrential tears. And I should have expected it. With everything I had learned about him, it should not have been a surprise in the least.
Almost a year ago, I was floored when I received a Facebook message from a girl named Danielle. A tenative message, it sounded so familar...and then I realized that it was the exact same thing that I probably would have written if I had been in her place. For weeks I had been praying for peace…just something, anything, to help me believe that I done the right thing, that I hadn't mistakenly destroyed what I had once thought was the best thing to ever come into my life. And, with her message, it looked like it had finally arrived. But I was also flabbergasted because, up until that point, I had no idea that she had even existed.
When Chris and I were together, both he and his friends made it sound like he had been single forever. I can still remember a conversation with one of his female friends at Bryant Lake Bowl a few weeks after we started dating: She had gushed over and over about how, for so long, Chris had waited to meet someone special. "He even said that to me when we met for coffee a couple months ago…"All I want is to meet someone special."And now here I was! seemed to be the unspoken end to that story. I had absolutely no idea that he had recently been in a serious relationship with Danielle less than three months before we met….a relationship so serious that she had been ready to renovate her house to make more space for him and his son when they all moved in together.
She helped me put the pieces together by relating her own experience, which was so eerily similar that it reminded me of two friends of mine who share the same shitty ex, and how, after finally getting together over a happy hour, they found out that he had sent them each the same text after their respective break-ups - "Standing in the middle of the grocery store right now, crying. God, this is so hard." It would have been hilarious, the way Chris had pulled the same bait and switch act on both of us, if it hadn't all been so incredibly sad.
For the past year, I've struggled with figuring out how I was going to trust myself again. After being tricked so badly by someone I had loved, how was I ever going to be in another relationship and not be suspicious of every single thing they said or did? The answer, I told myself at one point, was that I had to believe that, at some level, there was a part of him that was decent and good, that did really love me at one point. I really wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that the person I had loved so much had, at some point, been worthy of so much devotion. That all of it hadn't been just some mirage.
Finding out about Sarah, though, dissolved that entirely. And not because he got a new girlfriend…because his being with Sarah so soon after we died confirms what I had long suspected but also dreaded: That the man I had believed to be good and decent and worthy of grace was really just a selfish coward.
To put it succinctly: The guy's a total dick.
And my goodwill? Has officially been spent.
--------------------------
I'm sure Sarah is an absolutely lovely person. That's the ironic thing about Chris - knowing Danielle as well as I do now, I can confidently say that the one thing Chris has going for him is his excellent taste in women. I'm sure she's blissfully happy with Chris and his son and their dogs, and I would not wish to strip her of that bliss. It's pretty amazing, when you're in it.
But that's for her. Not for him.
For a short time after I found out about Sarah, there was this deep, down and dirty part of me that wanted to rage and rail against him, that wanted to release every ounce of Hulk Rage I felt and do anything I could to ruin his life. Because I hadn't done that before. I know you don't deserve a medal when and if you act like a grown-up after a break-up, but goddamn it…he went out of his way to hurt me in various petty, cruel, and juvenile ways, and I didn't do any of that stuff to him, and now this. I wanted to out him. I even wrote this incredibly satisfying, brilliantly passive-aggressive, completely sarcastic and hilarious part about how I'm sure Sarah makes Chris happy in certain ways because (insert dirty laundry here that I'm sure she takes of now that I no longer have to, etc). And that shit? Felt GOOD when I was writing it.
But the thing is, even though I no longer feel any duty or obligation to be kind or gracious, I'm still better than that.
And despite all my faults and mistakes, I'm still better than him.
The least of which?
I wouldn't have kept the whale mug around after I got a new boyfriend.
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