Hey you, I’m sorry, but this is over. It’s not you, it’s me. I know it’s kind of dirty for me to do this in a letter, but it’s not the worst way I could have done it. Breaking up is a distasteful business — men and women at their worst. Because trying to be civil and rational about it is the hardest path to choose, it’s much easier to play dirty — just hurl the relationship hard as you can against the wall and watch it shatter.
An act of romantic terrorism is the most terrible way to do it. It’s very easy to do: You lie, you cheat, you pick a fight over something arbitrary, and let it explode. But good God, it’s painful. You have to hurt that other person, hurt them enough to make them shout across the room and leave you voicemails instructing you never to speak to them ever again.
It’s sadistic, but it’s easy to do because it’s easy to hurt someone close to you. You know what makes them tick, you know their insecurities, you know what to say and you know exactly how to twist the knife into their back to exact the most pain. It’s easy because there is something (no matter how weird or petty) to blame for the end. You don’t have to admit what’s really wrong with your relationship: It can be the other person, or the lie or the dishes in the sink. Mostly though, it’s easy because these acts come out of anger and at the time feel strangely cathartic and righteous. Suddenly, a fight about a hair iron becomes the end. You hear it on your voicemail: “The end,” and realize you’ve hurt yourself as much as you’ve hurt them. Acts of romantic terrorism are always suicide missions; you have to do it knowing you’ll feel dead when it’s over. Like I said, it’s a dirty, distasteful business, but as a better man than I will ever be said: So it goes.
But I couldn’t do that to you; we’re not that involved. You can only commit that kind of atrocity with someone who’s under your skin, and baby, you just ain’t under mine. Which isn’t to say this all didn’t mean anything to me. What, this has been going on since January? We’ve had some good times – remember Valentine’s Day? I know it pissed you off that I wanted to spend it by myself, but I don’t care. If you had a problem with what I said, you ought to masturbate more — you’ll like it. We had that “scary STD” talk right after Spring Break. I know it’s grimy, but people need to talk more about it; it’s your health after all. Oh, remember when I stereotyped all your friends? That was funny, right? We’ve had some good chuckles over the past couple of months.
But I’m sure you want to know why. Everyone who gets dumped wants to know why. And most of the time, they never get the straight answer. But I’ll lay it out for you. It really isn’t you, it’s me. We’ve got this nice casual thing going on. I pop in once a week for some time together, and that’s fine, but I want more. Actually no, I want nothing. I want to be totally single and free for the summer. Or maybe I want to start something serious and get on the path to my MRS degree (hahaha).
Anyway, the thing is I don’t know what I want. It isn’t just you, I’m ambivalent about everything. When I was a tartlette, my mother told me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up. Anything. Those are a lot of decisions to make. And it didn’t stop there. Today, I can stand in the shampoo aisle of Target for the better part of an hour, paralyzed by my options. And you know what I do? I usually walk out with nothing. I choose no decision. I can have anything I want, but how can I choose if I don’t know what I want? And that’s how I am now; I don’t want to choose to be with you because I do not want to choose to not be with someone else. I don’t know what I want, but I do know that I don’t want to commit, not now. I have too many things I want to do, like run for office on the Freak Power ticket and have lunch with the real Karl Rove. I don’t want to commit to a shampoo, much less you.
So what do you do when you get dumped? Get drunk. Turn on Nilsson’s “Without You” and play it on a loop for a couple of hours. You can cry, it’s ok, everyone does it, even boys, even cold-hearted cynical old me. Self-loathe and marinate in your sadness. But only for a little while. You’ll wake up one day, and you won’t play Nilsson. You’ll hum along to “Stop Your Sobbing,” or maybe burst out into the Brady Bunch’s “It’s a Sunshine Day.” Go to class, go to work, go anywhere, just be alive and be pleasant and you’ll realize it wasn’t all as bad as you thought it was. It hurts, it really hurts, but I promise you: You will make it through the battle alive.
I wish you the best, and I still want to be friends. There’s no bad blood between us, right? And who knows, half the time when you say it’s the end, it’s really only halftime. People come swinging back into your crazy life and everything starts all over again. Give me some time, give me some space, let’s chill out over the summer and see other people. But you know how to get a hold of me, and maybe we’ll boomarang back into bed again. For now, I just need to be free to dance dirty and flirt on the T and make out with someone with no last name.
Love always,
Meredith
Meredith Spencer, a junior in the College of Communication, has been a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at [email protected].