At this point I’ve done all I can to remove J from my life…for both our own sakes. Any attempt to reach out to him left me unfulfilled and him angry and annoyed.
Unfortunately, technology has a way of breaking down barriers and I got the invitation to his going away party just days after my roommate split for Rehab.
He had received a new job and was moving to San Francisco. I wanted to be happy for him. J was always excellent at his job and had been ear marked for bigger and better things long before we ever met.
I just couldn’t bring myself to reach out to him and wish him well and luck in his move. Had I given him the opportunity to know I was leaving when I left for South Carolina I would have wanted a hug or better yet a “Please don’t go…”
I sat there in Starbucks nursing the iced coffee I had purchased with the quarters I had saved for laundry having just posted an ad on craigslist for a new roommate and I stared blankly at the picture of his face on the invitation. I knew that face so well…his deep set eyes….the silly smirk he always made when being photographed to hide the fact that he was embarrassed to show his slightly crooked teeth…the patch of dark chin hair that was starting to turn a little grey…and I realized just how much I still missed him.
The fact that he was moving on to bigger and better things while I was struggling to catch up from my DUI and my roommates pill addiction was just extra salt in my already open wound. I left the store. I sat in my car (that was 60 days past due and counting) and I couldn’t shake the image of his face and I let myself cry.
I hadn’t let myself cry in months, let alone cry over him. I promised myself that I’d take away the power I had given him over me when I had to pull myself out of the passenger side window of my truck shortly before my 27th birthday.
I cried because I still loved him. I cried because my car was going to get taken away. I cried because I was facing eviction. I cried because I couldn’t seem to fix my own mistakes and I cried because the first person I trusted after J had financially raped me the same way he emotionally raped me.
Hell…. maybe I was crying just because I wanted to cry. I wasn’t exactly sure but I knew I couldn’t stop.
I had left Chicago 8 months before he did but somehow it felt like he was leaving me all over again. I’ve never been to San Francisco and didn’t see a reason to go in the immediate future. I had treated my decision to leave as a badge of pride and proof of my strength. If he didn’t want me anymore than he wasn’t going to have the chance to ever have me again because I was gone and was never coming back.
His leaving felt like yet another time he got the upper hand. In my mind he was supposed to stay in Chicago, occasionally hearing about me through the grape vine, maybe seeing me from a far when I came to town for Pride or Market Days. He was supposed to stay in his restaurant two floors below the Sanrio store and know that he would never again get to see me giggle and smile because he went upstairs so he could surprise me with some silly pink knick-knack.
Now he was gone….really…truly…gone.
I managed to collect myself enough to drive home. I walked into my apartment. I climbed into bed with my dog and stared at the ceiling for a while.
It was somewhere between sleep and wake that it finally occurred to me exactly why his moving bothered me so much….
Even if J and I had stayed together. Even if I had found a great job in Chicago and solved all my problems. Even if he had never cheated and we had had a wonderful sex life and never faced the problems that we did.
The cold hard truth of the situation is that no matter what the status of mine and J’s relationship, he would have accepted that job in San Francisco and he wouldn’t have asked me to come with him.
Had he not dumped me in October than he would have been dumping me in July. There was no way around accepting the fact that this relationship would have ended and it would have ended badly and it wouldn’t have been my decision.
My heart broke all over again.
I ignored a call from a debt collector. I let the dog out. Then I went to work.
