Because, "Yes, I removed you from my Top 8, but YOU FUCKING LEFT ME!!!" I screamed into the phone activating the voice limiter, before spewing: "You decided that what we had was nothing... less than nothing, not worth it– do not resuscitate. So, you lit a match and set fire to what I thought was going to be the rest of our lives, and though I begged you to break away clean, you dutifully tended the flame until now we truly have nothing left but ashes. Why ashes? Perhaps to cast yourself as Phoenix and 'rise above' us? But I don't see a Phoenix right now, my mythology is more plain, you're looking more and more like Cassandra."
That's what I should have said, what I would have said if I'd had my wits about me. If I was really as practiced as I should be about break ups. Because when it comes to breaking up, nobody has done it more than yours truly. Unions of any length, casual and weird, love and indifference, mistresses and friends with benefits. I've had them all, and they have all ended– poorly. So one could safely assume that I've heard every breakup line in the book. I have, I've had real world experience with almost every feasible breakup scenario. I can put you ground zero in any situation and give you some great breakup lines, real classics. Sadly, I am quite unrehearsed when it comes to matters of my ex, mostly because I really convinced myself that I would never have to refer to her as "my ex." It's even more shocking when the ex, starts kicking some of those famous breakup lines. Can you imagine? Classics coming out of those beautiful lips?
I am a sucker for those lips, and those eyes, even on the phone. Therefore, today there would be no well played retorts, or piercing parting shots. Today there would only be studied elucidation. Explaining my actions, my voice broke: "I'm doing what I have to do to survive you." I meant that, and I spoke slowly choosing my words carefully. I apologized again and again for freaking out. She deserves the benefit of the doubt, even though she has done pretty much what every other woman I've ever broken up with, that doesn't mean shit. Does it? Of course it doesn't, she was different. No one has ever told me that they needed "some space, a little alone time to find themselves" only for me to find themselves on a date a week later, or in her case "some dates." But that shouldn't make me paranoid? It's not a lie, it's a half-truth or something. I should not be confused, she is different, even though everything about this feels familiar. Then it hits me, she really is different. Because it's not like she has suddenly become this other person, this stranger has been in my midst for some time now. I've felt her puling away, I could feel her start to hold back as early as last year. But, it's not like she wasn't commited, for a time there she was still in it to win it: eyes on the prize. Turns out, she wasn't that sure she wanted the prize, and now she's confident that the prize is no prize at all. Waitaminit? What?
So yeah, I'm a little flipped out nowadays, paranoid– suspicious. Stupidly listening to what other people say, trying to find some shred of logic to this situation, some reason for this same old rhyme that I been singing far too long. And yes, I am screaming your name into the void you left, and missing you, and checking every man's face for traces of what loving you used to do to me when I was with you, and oh yeah...I took you off my top eight.
Make no mistake you are still number one in my heart, though I know I must get over you. Hate it or love it, you are moving on, and I must move on and the temptation was just too great to click a link and get a web's eye view of your life without me. Oh the places you'll go without me! I don't want to debate the intentions of whomever just left a glowing comment on your page, and called you a goddess or whatever. See over here, on this side; it's desperation time. I am having to relent my relationship, I'm cut off from my best friend, I can no longer sleep with my lover, my life as I had planned it is no more. You can't question my level of commitment, because I stayed even when I should have left, only to have you leave. So, seeing the digital you smiling, sad, or just plain moving on, right there? Right on top of my Top 8? Oh hell naw, HELL to the NAW! Better to let you as you put it, "grow without me" without me. I can't take a front row seat in front of your second life as a single woman, dreading that day that my profile pic disappears from your Top 8, and another meaningless act becomes pointed in this macabre mambo we've hypnotized ourselves into performing.
There's something else that's so different and troubling about this time around. The stakes have never seemed so high, I guess it's because I haven't just lost some girl, I've lost you. You carry for me so many connections, so much emotion, and now all we know of each other is this terrible time in each others' lives. Well, my life anyway, the person who leaves if nothing else carries with them conviction, that goes a long way towards joy.
Soon, this will be just another faded memory too, an anecdote told at the mention of an old name that you haven't thought of in forever. All this discourse will be reduced to a pat turn of witty phrase or two. The reality of who we were replaced by catch all titles like: "the lil' young poetry chick" or "that crazy old dj freak". That day,will be saddest of all because, well; we simply won't be sad. Not about this at least, not anymore. The mention of me won't pause your heart or steal your breath, even for a moment. Perhaps you will smile wryly and laugh at a better memory, grace may even make you deny whatever title was used. But amidst the grace and memories you definitely won't be sad because I will definitely be gone, and if anything you will only miss, missing me.
