The first and only time I experienced a break-up, it was all my doing. And it was long, drawn-out, and messy. I wanted to rid myself of the guy, but he was convenient. He was familiar. He was the first. It was hard to let go, even knowing that was what I really wanted.
He didn't make it easy for me. The first few times I tried to have "the conversation," he skillfully redirected and sent me spinning down nostalgia lane. "But think of all the humid summer nights after a rain, when we've walked down a softly steaming pavement hand in hand." And I would get sentimental, and turn chicken-shit, and I'd stop myself from saying what I really wanted to say.
It was easier to say it, in a private email, after I moved a continent away that autumn. And I thought, what with all the hinting I'd been doing that summer, he would not be terribly surprised. Perhaps he wasn't, but he was still devastated and he decided to announce his grief to every mutual friend and acquaintence in an email of his own. I don't remember which of them forwarded it to me; I suppose whoever it was thought it perhaps unfair that there was an apparent character assasination plot underway while I was on the other side of the Atlantic. I think that mass email was titled "Paint It Black;" I remember being horrified at the melodrama of it all. I was immersed in British culture by then and had almost forgotten the morbid and self-indulgent emotional style preferred by young Americans.
We reconciled a few weeks later, however. I'm not sure why. Probably I was lonely, probably the new boy I had tried to woo had become preoccupied with his studies. It was not a happy reunion, however. In some blog I had posted a "100 things about me" list; one of those being the number of boys I had kissed (and you could've counted them on one hand.) The number was exactly 1 higher than the number the boyfriend knew himself to be, and when he saw this he went slightly ballistic.
I couldn't understand how he could be that angry that I had shared a few lip-locks with another fellow during the weeks we were broken up. But it wasn't the last time I kissed the other fellow, and it wasn't the last time I fell asleep in the other fellow's bed. I learned to keep things to myself, however; I learned that if you want to have honesty with a man, first you have to find one that isn't jealous and possessive.
I dumped him again when I got home. He tried to make it as ceremonious as possible; when I told him it simply wasn't going to work out, he brought out every momento he had saved during our relationship and deposited them at my feet. And then he turned and left without a word. I sobbed. He had achieved the desired effect of making me feel like shit for making him feel like shit. And still, I didn't realize what a shit he was for doing so. It was too long before I found my way out the door he had painted black.