What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

by Kristin Newman

There was a new life coming, and it was going to be as colorful as Dutch tulip fields.

Basically, the simple act of obsessing got the juices flowing, and I created a temporary crush on my married colleague.

And that’s when I took all of that “love” and started making pro/con lists, which are both the death of love, and a good 10 percent of my journals. And, deep down, I kept wondering about Ferris.

“Why are you crying when you broke up with him?” “Because I’m broken! He’s great! And Trevor was great! I’m getting older, I should want to settle down! But I don’t want to! Maybe I won’t ever want to! Everyone else wants to, what’s wrong with me? Maybe I’ll sabotage all relationships forever because I’m broken!”

I hadn’t found true love, but I had stumbled onto the people who were going to make my life without it happier. My life was starting to become what it was supposed to be.

“Promiser of Everything and Deliverer of Nothing.”

“When we are old we will smile about these times we have together when we where young.”

“Sure I love you but sometimes shit happens”

Everyone I knew, no matter what they chose, was at least a little in mourning for that other thing.

It made me more determined than ever to break the stereotype: I would not be a sad, bitter Bridget Jones, waiting for her prince/barrister. I would not panic about my age. I would enjoy my life if it killed me.

He was out there. He made me different. He was a possibility, a maybe, just maybe. And that was now over.

My therapist says, “All tenderness comes from your first pain.” That is, all of those buttons that get pushed in your life, all of the things that bother you and worry you irrationally more than the same things bother other people, they all have to do with your first big heartbreak.