To Each Their Own

I hate closing on Thursday nights, mostly because of the difficulty in arranging a ride home at midnight when the doors close. I hadn't spoken to the ex in probably a little over a month, which I really had no problem with. The relatively quiet beginning to summer suddenly saw a spike in memorable evenings in July and, well, new job and all, things were looking a bit nicer these days.

But when the ex first chirped up last week with one of the usual, familiar rehearsed texts about missing me and then another came in Tuesday or Wednesday, I took the opportunity to respond by asking if she would like to give me a ride home on Thursday night.

Would she?! ... Could she?!

The ride back to my house involved much of me catching her up to speed: my quitting the chain restaurant, my starting at a country club closer to home and my recent trip to Atlanta—a subject that I quickly grew uncomfortable with, seeing how:

• a) she expressed disappointment that I "went without her"
• b) I never really intended to bring her in the first place when we were dating (I talked of a "summer road trip" with the boys)
• c) and certainly looking back now on how things did turn out, the idea that I would even remotely reconsider changing them or regret anything (READ: NO)
  

Luckily, that topic died down before any real sordid details could be withdrawn from me and when we did arrive at my house, it only seemed natural that she would come inside.

When first looking at my room—a place she obviously hadn't seen in more than a month—she marveled at how clean it was. And indeed, my bedroom is admittedly pretty pristine compared to when we were dating. Actually, I'd be willing to say that right now after countless hours of organizing and general cleaning, the place looks the cleanest it's been since I moved in.

I thought maybe that alone would be an indication that things were truly different now, but I mistakenly assumed this would go much smoother.

Fast-forward to the morning when the ex catches a glimpse of something else that's changed. I remember at one time here on BMC where I was going to start a glossary for my nicknames I had for exes of mine. But I ultimately scrapped the idea, mentioning somewhere in there how I wanted to begin referring to any future girlfriend as the "groundskeeper," seeing as one of the more fascinating and telling things about ladies is their requests concerning body hair maintenance. (The only thing that comes to mind is this.)

And I guess the ex didn't like what the most recent possible replacement groundskeeper had asked for. Or she was pissed that there was another groundskeeper at all. And then she proceeded to spend the entire morning trying to make me feel bad about it.

I reminded her that we broke up some three months ago now. The phrase I uttered more often than any other this morning had to be, "I think you're just telling me what I want to hear."

I got to saying that a lot since most of what she believes is an appeal to my emotions comes across rather as rehearsed and repetitious.

If you were to take her at her word, then my ex has had some incredibly bad luck—and we're talking about a lot of phone calls she never got, text messages she never received and just about every other sort of totally random explanation for one letdown after another in our relationship.

Or if you have a slightly more cynical nature and have some pretty good reason to believe that you're not getting the whole story in a lot of these cases, then my ex is pretty clearly a pathological liar.

To this day, I've been told that the first text message I "shouldn't have seen" was just a joke and that the other one, I guess, didn't really exist. Or something like that. (She never bothered with an explanation, insisting instead that she never sent anything like that ... since meeting me.)

It might sound kind of silly, I guess, to still be holding the rather damning contents of a couple text messages against your former lover, but when it appears you're not the only one who's being talked dirty to, what feelings of exclusiveness in a relationship are you supposed to still pretend you feel? I could only conclude I couldn't.

And so that's why I bailed on the second-longest relationship of my life—which just goes to show you how meaningless the lengths of relationships are too. (I'm almost always the dumpee rather than the dumper, so it's kind of odd that both of my longest relationships were the only two [real relationships] I can recall that ended when I pulled the plug.)

I couldn't ever see myself realistically trusting this woman again, and I mean really believing her like I know I ought to be and like I know I have in much happier relationships in the past. I know something like that is probably out there, so it's stupid to convincing myself that I should settle for less.

But just as I get overly self-righteous about how wronged I was, there's the ugly truth about a wee little bit of responsibility that I have to accept: I was wrong for going into her phone to find those text messages.

When explaining to that most recent possible groundskeeper about why the ex became an ex, she was more than a little put off by my admitting I acted so paranoid.

And while I want to vehemently argue that I've never done this before and her lying caused me to do this and I only did it twice—but look what I found!—I know full well that this in some way speaks volumes about my insecurity. I used to say "I'd never do that!" when girls spoke of the boyfriends they had breaking into their journals, and now here I was, basically showing the same disdain for one's privacy.

And while I cannot undo what has already been done or unsee what has already been seen, all I can do is move on and promise to never do it again.

That, and shave accordingly.