It’s amazing the way this over-the-top and uncalled-for meanness warmed my loathsome little heart. It’s a strategy I’ve followed, perhaps at my peril, when my friends go through similar scenarios.
I know it’s childish and lame, but it feels good, and you’re allowed to be a miserable shit for a while after you get dumped. You know your ex and his new girlfriend aren’t evil, but it’s easier to feel like they are. Breakups can turn fully dimensional people into stubborn little vessels for your most stubborn little feelings. It takes a while for them to change back.
Very recently a strange thing happened. Someone who still knows Erika brought her up to me. I cringed: that bitch.
“You know she still thinks you’re pissed at her.” This gave me pause. She still thinks what? How does she even know me? I was twenty, I was a mousy girl she met one time. I assumed she hadn’t even caught my name. I figured she didn’t know I was a person. But I realized, Oh my god, I’m not pissed at her. I’m SO not pissed at her. I literally have no feelings about her. In fact I don’t think I’d recognize her if I fell over her! Oh, hello, fully dimensional human, you’re free to leave my brain now!
It was a real lesson in my endless capacity to hold a grudge. I do it so well, I don’t even notice that it’s happening. I walk around with these calcified resentments for years until someone points them out and I can go, “Good lord, is that still in here? Let’s get rid of that. And throw out ‘pretending that watching boys play video games is fun’ while we’re at it.”
I had to take a moment to wonder who else fell into this category of default enemy. I went through a mental list of people who, in theory, I’d want to hit in the face with a meat tenderizer. My coworker from ten years ago who owes me like three grand? It was ten years ago! You were addicted to OxyContin! Go! Be free! My seventh-grade teacher, who told me that most child actors don’t succeed as adult actors? You just wanted to scare me into having a backup plan! Farewell! Good luck! Tori from fourth grade, who accused me of writing mean stuff about all our friends on the playground wall? BURN IN HELL, TORI. I KNOW IT WAS YOU!!!
I’m still working on it.
guys in la
Like so many of us do after we’ve been dumped, I decided I could redeem myself by examining the choices I’d made and vowing to do the exact opposite from then on. I entered a classic phase of post-breakup overcorrection. This lasted about a year and came in two waves.
First, I became intensely wary of guys. I wasn’t going to be made a fool of again. I once made plans with a sweet-faced bartender, and when he innocently asked to reschedule, I said, “You know, where I come from, this is called ‘being blown off.’?” Where I come from? Did I think I was from The Dukes of Hazzard?
Second, I wanted to exact my revenge on men in general. I realized that modern flirting was essentially just being mean while smiling. I hadn’t mastered the whole getting people to like “the real me” thing, but insulting someone to their face? That I could do. And it seemed like the more attractive the guy was, the more he liked being insulted. We’d meet, I’d be charming (i.e., unnecessarily mean), we’d go on a few dates, I’d trick him into thinking he was in love with me, and then I’d stop returning his calls.
I wanted to punish someone for how I felt, but it never helped. It was stupid and unwarranted. I guess I felt more in control for a while, but soon I realized I was no better than the cliché “geek” from high school who grows up and bones as many girls as possible out of spite. Which really took the fun out of it.
By twenty-two, I was back to business as usual love-wise: alternating between being contentedly alone and scaring off anyone I actually liked with my intensity and desperation. I did, however, implement a new rule: no discussion of “the number.”
I’m happy to say that only a few years on, guys stopped thinking it was okay to ask me how many people I’d had sex with. I don’t know if that change was a reflection of my age or the quality of men I was seeing, but there was a time when, if a guy had known me for more than twenty-four hours, he thought it was his right to know my complete sexual history.