Since I had concluded Ted was cheap, at least when it concerned me, I was prepared for his #inexpensive birthday gift. What I wasn't prepared for was the lack of imagination that went into the selection. #Stereotypes were popular fodder for Ted, so despite women's #liberation, birth control pills, and Ms. Magazine, Ted figured incorrectly that I would like a fancy compact. He might have bought it in a pharmacy or stolen it from one of his sisters, but in any case, it was not suited to my #lifestyle. I hardly expected a piece of jewelry, but a compact? I was lucky if I had a tube of lipstick at the bottom of my handbag. Later I threw it away. I not only associated it with loss, but I knew I'd never use the damn thing!
The break-up had been in my sights long before it happened, so I can't say it was unanticipated. Regardless, it hit me hard, and I mourned Ted's absence more than I had mourned anything up to that point. I walked through my senior year at Kean College in a #depressed trance, and no one cared or remarked about it, not my family, my teachers, or my friends. I was alone with this intense feeling that I was a failure in love. For love was really the issue here. Ted was my first introduction to #romantic love, and I had liked the feeling. I had gotten high on it and the opportunity to use words like "steady" and "boyfriend." In fact, the sense of failure was so confusing that I had to question the quality of my loss: Was I truly missing Ted and his unique personality and ways, or was I missing a male's companionship and attentions? Did I love Ted, or did I love the feeling of caring I had imagined he reciprocated?
I discovered it's hard to answer those questions when you're on the losing end of a #breakup. Ted never really broke up with me in the classical sense --he never articulated the desire to discontinue our relationship because he wanted to see other women. He just stopped calling; he dropped out of my life. In a sense he took a coward's way out, but to be fair to him and to the relationship, there was no easy way to say goodbye. If he had verbally expressed his feelings, I might have cried or tried to seduce him or prolong the relationship in any of fifty ways. Some things must end, and our relationship did just that.
Except it didn't, really. Since Ted was a cousin of my brother-in-law, I had to go through many years of the discomfort of seeing him and his wife at family weddings, bar mitzvahs and other #festivities. Even with my husband in tow, I found it hard. We never spoke to one another, and I was complicit in this decision. I don't know what Ted's wife knew of our relationship, but my husband was fully #cognizant. However, I'm sure my mate did not really understand the depth or the extent of my attachment to Ted, for that was what it had morphed into. Not love, but an odd attachment to my youth and the innocence and freedom it engendered. At every event in which we were both invited, I noticed that Ted and I would both exchange quick looks at each other. Did he notice I had gained a little weight the way I noticed his increasing baldness? Did he ever think, 'What if' as I had done so many times?
Continued next time....
In the Scottish dialect of the old New Year's Eve song Auld Lang Syne, the composer posits the question: Should old acquaintances be forgot? The short answer to this is "Sometimes." One example will suffice. A "friend" of mine emailed me the other day and although she is not a writer, her words spoke plenty. Her first rebuke was that I don't answer her calls, and this is a claim I cannot deny. But the accusation was caustic, mean-spirited--it was as if I had neglected to visit her in the hospital, that's how grievous my omission was. She insinuated so much by those few harsh words. Why did she call? Purportedly to inform me of her physical status and that of her dog Murph. Being the obedient child I still am, I did call her afterwards, and we spoke. Mostly S spoke of her new illness--osteoarthritis of the spine--and her dog's possible diagnosis of valley fever. I listened and listened and listened until I just couldn't take it any more. The...
Comments