Salt

One of the things that Sam and I joked about was being polyamorous because she knows I’m dating Rachel Maddow in my head, but Susan is her primary. 😛 And then I told her that I was also dating Helen Mirren. Obviously, I have a very busy inner life and Google Calendar.

My very busy inner life made me happy yesterday, because I laid out everything that was going on with me and why, and my stats boomed. I don’t want to tell you exactly how many because I don’t want to scare Sam by telling her just how many people think she’s an idiot. The 20 shares the post got should give her an indication. I have entries where thousands of people have read them, and yet not one person shared it.

I am enjoying this moment of schadenfreude, but not because I am being vindictive. Quite the opposite. I’m feeling better about myself in a way that is completely separate from anyone I’ve ever dated, not just the last one. When Sam walked out, it only ended a future that didn’t happen. I’m not upset anymore. A three week relationship isn’t worth crying over any longer than necessary. I just don’t know how I feel about a relationship for me anymore.

Maybe I’ll just date people until I die because I am too emotionally intense to limit my emotions to one person. They run so deep it’s scary for both of us. For instance, I told Sam once that even when she’s not with me, she doesn’t leave the room…. and it was so true then that it hurts to remember. But it’s true. Once she got under my skin, I wanted her there in some capacity for life. Married, friends, whatever. That part didn’t matter. I just liked her. Period. I thought she was a good person, and I was wrong, at least in how she treated me. I’m sure she’s wonderful to other people, I just never became her priority. I wasn’t someone that she would do anything for, much less end our relationship in person. I didn’t think of her as my girlfriend, I was more casual than that. But that’s not the message she took home. The message she took home was that I was falling in love with her too fast…. when in reality I was furious that she trashed our potential, not anything we’d already done. I saw pictures of our future and thought, “I want that.” At no time did I say, “I want that tomorrow,” or even a couple of years from now. I thought I didn’t have to worry about all that stuff until her 15-year-old graduated from high school.

I was certainly infatuated, drunk on the spirit of attraction. I also loved her platonically in a way that said, “I’m ok with just being your person. If you need something, call. There is no time in this life where I will not pick up the phone if it’s you.” For Sam, I think she underestimated philia and overestimated eros. Philia is the love that gets ignored. If we lose a friend, it’s not an acceptable form of grief…… even though it happens ALL THE TIME. Love is such a confusing word in English. It should be all Greek to me.

The thing I keep ruminating over is timing. Sam could have asked me to be exclusive so much earlier, and even when I was on said date, she never left me…. even after she broke up with me and I had to try like hell not to lose my shit over a girl when I was supposed to be on a date with someone else. It was so embarrassing. Just one of those “I hope the earth swallows me up” moments.

The other thing that really irritates me is that we had plans for dinner on Monday. When she broke up with me, I said, “I asked you if we could talk about this later and you break up with me?” She said that Monday was too far away. The longer I think about it, the funnier it gets. It’s so easy to be amused by the youngest of four, because I’m the oldest of four and she fucked around and found out. Don’t come at me with your bullshit, you’ll just be windmilling your arms while I have my hand on your forehead.

And by the way, I apologize for sounding like an asshole yesterday by seemingly giving conjecture about Sam being a miserable walking disaster as if I needed it to make myself feel better. I don’t. I just forgot to say that one of her last texts to me was “I’ve been crying for two days, I have a killer headache, and a bloody nose. And none of that matters.” It was unbelievable. Her audacity struck me dumb. You’d rather cry over me than tell me what’s wrong? You can’t wait to sit down together and use your words like a grown-up? Her impatience and jealousy got the better of her. Once you set up a bad pattern, you never get back out of it.

That’s what convinced me to go no contact, not that I thought she was actually going to rush right over and apologize. She sent me an apology text, and that’s like, the same. As my friend Michael said, “it was the reaction of an 18-year-old boy.” I don’t date children.