The Final (Long) Chapter

This will be the last post about The Boy. It is over.

I had a bit of a breakdown this week. It was stupid because Wednesday was a great day. I had a yummy thai lunch with Shell, LP and BMG - my outside of school friends that also happen to go to or work at UW. Then I had drinks with my school friends to celebrate the end of the quarter and talk transportation (sounds thrilling, I know!). I had more drinks with BMG, who was really excited to see me, despite having just seen me at lunch. We had a really great conversation about serious stuff and about funny stuff. I'm very appreciative that nothing bad came out of my drunken indiscretions on Halloween, and that I think we have actually grown closer since then.

But during all of this wonderful Wednesday-ness, something happened to bring me down. As I said, it was stupid. One of the new grad students remembered briefly meeting The Boy last year when she came to visit. She knew we were dating then, and asked what happened. One of my officemates was listening as I gave her a version of it all that actually made The Boy look like a classy fella instead of the ass that he is. My officemate, looking not quite sure if he should say what he was planning to say, mentioned that he actually ran into The Boy in the hall last Friday, seconds after helping me get a laptop set-up, meaning had I looked up and out the door at the right time, there he would have been. For the third time... it is stupid, but I freaked out.

I was on my way out to meet up with BMG anyway, and when I made it onto the bus, I just broke down in tears. I don't know if it was the beer or true emotions, but I was a mess. And then I became resourceful. There is nothing worse than a resourceful, drunk girl. You know all those old texts I had saved in the phone? Like the first one The Boy sent me, and the ones when we were in that make me sick text-flirting phase? Yeah, those ones that Boston told me I was crazy for not deleting ages ago. Well, they came in handy when the resourceful drunk girl decided she wanted to text The Boy, who's number was no longer in her phone book. I hate being resourceful! I texted him: "Do you want to talk sometime? Maybe tomorrow night?" Thankfully I was smart enough to realize that talking to him while drunk would NOT be a good idea. And thankfully I was already engaged in cheerful drinking with BMG when he sent a very defensive text back a bit later.

To go into the gory details (because this is supposed to be cathartic, ya know). I sent him a text on Thursday saying I was wrong and didn't want to talk, but that I was sorry for a lot (meaning being a bitch last week, and then last time we communicated). He sent a text saying that it wasn't my fault. That we just didn't work out. That nothing I did or didn't do could have changed things. That was the first time The Boy ever said anything like that to me. We supposedly broke up because he couldn't handle the distance between us. I wrote back saying that if he felt that way, he should have told me. What he did instead wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to drag it out, or to make me feel like shit when he closed himself off to me and started giving me less and less attention and affection. That I didn't deserve it.

He didn't response right away, but hours later I received the last email I ever want to get from him. He said I was right, that he should have done it earlier. That he was sorry, and he was wrong, and he was sorry for the hurt it caused. And he didn't want to talk about "us" anymore. If I wanted to talk about what was going on in my life, or his, he'd like that, but no more talk about the past. It is done and we can't take it back.

It stung. Pretty bad.

So, I ended it all - the relationship, my first broken heart, the past 6 months, with the following email:

***it is bittersweet, to finally get some honesty only to be hit with the realization that i deeply cared about someone who didn't even want to be dating me but was too chicken to do anything about it. and you wonder why i wouldn't want to be your friend now?

i am not mad at you. i don't hate you. i just don't respect you very much. that sucks because i used to respect you a lot. i do appreciate the honesty. i just wish it came a lot sooner.

so lets make a deal - i won't call/text/email to talk about "us" (after this email) and you won't call/text/email to talk about sweatpants or p.e. books or any other non-life threatening concern.

goodbye.***