This is not a true story

Comma

If nothing else, she helped me overcome my dependency on commas. A product of my prep school heritage perhaps, a school of thought obsessed with cramming as many ideas into as small a space as possible, possessed of the notion that more, and more, convoluted, was better, one would never have called me uncluttered. She harangued me for comma splices in my text messages. Even when the context was trivial and even when she was about to break up with me.

She broke up with me by moving to Phoenix. Her predecessors did it in text messages or over the phone. One used AOL Instant Messenger™ and another simply showed up at a party hand-in-hand with my (obviously erstwhile) best friend. I don’t blame her; it was as simple and clean as everything else she did.

We used to plan for our breakup. I asked her to kindly abstain from dating my friends for a few months. She asked me to kindly shut-the-fuck-up-and-kiss-her. Which I did. I was just so afraid of losing her. Rather I was afraid of her losing me the way the others had. I lied to you earlier: I was the AOLer and the texter. I hopped between friends like a slimy frog afraid if I sat too long on the same lily pad I’d sink.

As it turned out all that jumping around just tired me out and left an armful of pretty girls half-sunk in my hangups. I knew it wasn’t fair or even practical but it took this particular girl announcing one day that she was going to be an archaeologist in Arizona for me to get it through my skull that the past had already happened, the future hadn’t happened yet, and the present I created with someone was exactly half my responsibility.

She never spoke to her ex-boyfriends which makes me think she’ll never talk to me again. It’s not so much about bridges burned as it is about bridges never crossed again. I guess I’ll find out for sure on my birthday next month.

She told me she loved me on the fourth night we spent together. I informed her that she was crazy. Love is far too complex of a state of being to reach in two weeks. Whatever we were feeling couldn’t possibly be love until at least four months into an officially acknowledged relationship. She asked me to schedule our love for August. I gave up and started using the word too. At first I relegated it to aftersex and beforegoodbye but soon it began peppering our conversations with giddy nonchalance if that’s even possible. I think I actually fell in love in July.

She had no moral qualms with cheating. I did because cheating is wrong. She didn’t but she never cheated on me or anyone else because why would she want to? She broke up with boys when the relationship was over and not a moment later. She thought it was stupid that I usually waited another two months to pull the plug after sullying an affair with my conspicuous impatience. She told me my moral highground was littered with broken hearts.

We never fizzled or faded or even fought. We just ended.