I did it. I finally told my latest ex to go find himself! I cried but it was a cry where your heart is not breaking--it is just a manifestation of sadness that you ought to be feeling for a recurring death of a dead relationship. I then wiped away my tears and did some laundry. Relief is all I felt beneath the sad. That was good. If I didn't feel that I couldn't survive a third breakup. I just wouldn't. Now for the precursor: He bought me two tickets to Turkuaz, a Brooklyn band that he loved. They were playing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on a Saturday night. Finally! We had no social outings since we started dating. I never asked and because I never did he didn't make the effort. I couldn't ask--it was not for me to ask anything of him. But it was incumbent on him to do without being asked. I knew he wouldn't because as per his admission he was cheap. Once he asked me for $5 as my portion of the grocery he was buying for us! I knew then that he wasn't the one. But he was sexually so persuasive that I was on instant forget every time his cheapness reared. So here we were at a concert that he finally paid for. It was glorious. It was painfully sad too. Every time I looked at him in the middle of a song, him tapping my left bum to the music, or petting my hair or kissing my forehead, I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. I knew we were going to be done sooner than later. But I so desperately wanted my isle of romance, my frozen bit of desire, that I played along. It was my memory to hold and cherish long after he and I were gone, done, removed from each other's breaths. Like I said, there was happiness but no guttural joy in the moment. So bitter-sweet. I bought him a beer as if to pay my part in our performance. He asked me not to leave him. But he knew and I knew that leave each other we must. I could have lived with his friendship, his sexpertise was anyway to die for (definitely commitment worthy), his infinite gentleness, his child-like madness, his mad cooking skills, his patience to listen, learn, and pacify but for that betrayal. If only he had not betrayed me in January by going out on two dates without breaking off with me and while I was away soaking in his love. And the worst irony is me struggling to erase the betrayal so I could focus on his other qualities--knowing well that once trust is gone, it doesn't return. If I could have erased that moved by sheer intellectual exercise I would have. But my emotions were stuck on that moment. They couldn't eject, only to burn in the fire. Finally, the betrayal did us in. I couldn't believe him for anything he did after. He insisted that he loved me. I even wanted to believe him. I knew I didn't because my vagina refused to clench anymore. Every time he called me "baby" early on in our relationship, my vagina was a weeping tap. Now, nothing. And then he qualified--he loved me as one would a dear, dear friend, though he still felt "tugs" to his heart when he was around me. Tugs? Tugs? What the fuck, is what came to mind. I supported your unemployed ass by bringing you jaunts that paid! You stayed for free (no, he didn't even pay for groceries) at my brother's for nine days last December and your thank you was to betray his only sister after!
So my mind finally got my heart to shut down its pleadings and desperations and think of future--if I wanted to be with someone who had in just that one time shown me he couldn't be trusted. If he had never betrayed someone he loved before, then he didn't love me for he betrayed me. That was it. This is a fact. There is no post-modern analysis of this that will reveal something new, something to keep and feel protected by. I finally let go. I do love him. He showed me such incredible kindness as a man that no man in my life ever had. But he had shown me cruelty in the way he betrayed me and my family that no man every had. So I was at ground zero with him. A giant hole had gobbled us. We didn't exist anymore. I always knew that but now I came to terms with it. Maybe I am meant to be alone in my life. There is probably a plan for me that doesn't include having a man. Maybe I should just focus on making lots of money and drinking lots of good, young, red wine. Yes, that's the plan, for now.