becoming a human, one day at a time.

I was thinking about this the other day, and in the context of my personal story, they don’t come back. But! (Of course there’s a “but” on the blog of perennial hope and optimism) here are a couple of stories to fuck with you:

Remember 102? There is context that doesn’t get included in this blog because hi, I’m the heroine. But 102’s story was that he was on a quest to win back his ex in New York. And he did. He moved there to win her! He pulled all sorts of shit for that girl after they didn’t work out the first time. If this were a romantic comedy, that would mean that I was the very normal, pretty, occasionally well-off and a little bitchy-just-so-the-audience-doesn’t-like-her girl that the guy dates in the meantime. Crappy, but not completely inaccurate! Either way, he won back the shit out of that girl. Good for you, random girl. Good for you.

Also, in terms of “do they ever realize they didn’t treat you right,” I’m gonna go with a strong yes on this one… it’s just that rarely do you ever get to hear this revelation. CollegeEx sent me a note about this blog six years after we had any romantic contact and I couldn’t word vomit fast enough how fucking sorry I was for what a jerk I had been in college. If he hadn’t contacted me, he would have never gotten that apology because inserting yourself into someone else’s life just so you can relieve your conscience is kind of a dick move.

So, concerning moving on from your person, I’m going to give you some shitty-ass advice. When it comes to dealing with an ex I like to dabble in both of these genres:

- if one of us was going to die next week, how would I want to live this week?

- what puts me on a path to a lifetime of joy?

I hope you can tell immediately that these provide different answers. If someone was like, by the way, your RomCom is going to take a Ghost/Just Like Heaven twist by taking you out of the tangible realm, I’d be like, “sweet, let me call my ex so I can fall asleep and wake up next to him for the next several days…and get laid a lot…by someone who is weirdly talented in the kitchen for not really doing anything extreme… just like, understands butter and oil. Where is he? I have literally hours left to wear A LOT of lingerie. If he didn’t appreciate it before, he better fucking appreciate it now.”

This is obviously different than the understanding that he didn’t really want to be with me and I deserve just want to feel like a queen. Long term, it makes sense for me to distance myself from him, even in the friendship capacity, because keeping him around platonically is a bat-shit coverup for keeping him around desperate-he-comes-to-his-senses-ly.  

I love my ex as a person. It’s a huge bummer to me I don’t get to hang out with him. He’s really funny, and annoyingly insightful in a way that makes me love to ask him for advice and then immediately hate him for giving such logical and sound responses when all I wanted was to complain for half an hour. And it’d be so great if I could be as emotionally unavailable as I was even two years ago so that we could maintain some extremely unhealthy relationship, but after two years of working on being “open” I’m now a big time cry baby and if I’m gonna find someone to love the shit out of me, it’s not going to happen while I’m crying about how great my ex is at making fun of commercials.

Where am I going with this?  Right, is it stupid to hope someone will eventually you realize you were the bomb.com.

No, because if I said that was stupid I would be calling you, myself, and a lot of other people idiots. But it is stupid to hold that kind of hope meekly from a tower waiting for him to show up with this realization blaring from a 1980’s boombox. There’s no way I’m not going to wish someone I was painfully in love with will eventually feel the same way about me. Sorry, but that’s coded into the brain. No shaking that kind of hope. But there is a way to hope that while still moving on with your life. I hope one day that I’m a best-selling author… that doesn’t mean that I stopped going to my day-job in the meantime. The best thing you can do to not feel like a maniac is a little re-framing. 

Instead of hoping they wake up one day from a fever dream, sick with the realization that they need to win you back, hope for something lovelier. Hope that they marvel after you. Hope that they see you on TV and just think, “damn, I got to date that woman.” Hope that when they reveal they dumped you to their friends, that their friends cannot believe it. Hope that their ability to discard you was actually the universe clearing the path for something incredible. And in that hope, become what you’re hoping he sees. Because if it’s your dream, it’s what you hope you see, too. 

Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, it’s because all I’ve done for weeks is train and work and train and work and occasionally text my ex because WHY IS EVERYONE ALL OF A SUDDEN ALSO FROM MISSOURI and I am mad dog tired, y’all.