I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning

You ever get the feeling that some people just want to know they still have an effect on you?

So. The Ex.

The long and short of it- we dated for 6+ years. He was a bit of an alcoholic, and I was a bit of a pushover. We pretended that we were going to stay friends after we split up, but it mostly ended up in his new girlfriend stalking me, apologies (with seemingly ulterior motives), and awkward silences. I last saw him around a year and a half ago, and apparently we both, without saying anything, knew that despite there never being a big angry blowout, it was time for us to both stop pretending. And thus, outside of the occasional text message from him every few months, we stopped talking.

It was actually pretty comfortable to stop pretending we had very much to say.

In February, the first call in months. He asks me to be an apartment reference, for he is moving in with his new girlfriend, the one he met a month and a half earlier, who thankfully is his age and doesn't make a hobby out of sending me passive-aggressive emails. I agree out of some sort of obligation I don't even understand, given the fact that he needs me to serve as a reference because his rent cheques always bounced, leaving me to patch things up with our landlord. I never get a call.

After that, a few weird comments on Facebook, that I can only assume occurred when he was drunk, as they are nonsensical and disappear by the next morning. One is about our dead cat.

And then nothing for close to a year. Last month, I noticed that Facebook suggests that he and I should be friends, revealing that he has deleted me. Sure, I had a little righteous indignation swelling up at first, pretending as though I should have been the one with the right to delete him-- after all, he added me!-- but then, relief. For now I don't need to know anything about him, and he doesn't need to know anything about me. I can be finally be really angry, indifferent, whatever, without him popping up randomly every once in a while-- online or in real life, now that we live in different cities.

I realized several days later that for the first time in nearly 10 years, I didn't wish him happy birthday. I didn't even remember it was his birthday.

And, a week after his birthday, a mysterious text message on my phone from a number I don't know. "Hi Princess, just wanted to say a quick hello, hope you are well."

(yes, foreshadowing sucks on this one, but at the time, I was genuinely clueless)

I rack my brain for the origins of this number, and then, feeling somewhat guilty about not recognizing it, text back: "Hi! I feel like a jerk, but I lost a bunch of my numbers, so I have no clue who you are."

I text the Duke about this mystery message, and how awkward it is to have to figure out someone's identity. Without skipping a beat, he writes back: "I bet it's TheEx."

Two seconds later: "Haha, I'm hurt! It's your favourite ex."

Who, now, apparently wants to catch up.

And has tricked me into responding with his new cell phone number that of course I would have no way of knowing.

And knows that, while I may not had responded to his initial message, had I know, I'm pathologically incapable of being even a justifiable asshole, and have to respond once a conversation has been "officially started".

And, the whole time, I'm thinking that to delete me on Facebook and then to want to catch up weeks later is just the kind of hypocrite he is.

And I just play it cool, because I don't want him to know that I noticed in the first place.

Fuck.

Does anyone want to give me some lessons in justifiable assholishness?

Quote of the day (or the one in which I realize I am nearing spinsterhood)

"You should stop this nonsense and get yourself married."

- Comment with regards to my professional life heard today

The worst boyfriend ever

I have a theory that everyone needs a horrible romantic relationship at same point in their life. I'm not talking about abusive here, but rather someone who takes you for granted, is too jealous, is unreliable, even unfaithful. 

The reason for this? To find your boundaries. 

We are all a little clueless when we first start dating. If you were like me, your role models were your "mature" friends who had boyfriends from 13 onwards (when I was still in the awkward caterpillar eyebrow and twelve sizes too big t-shirt phase), sitcoms, or Sweet Valley High. We are told it is supposed to a perfectly smooth ride, with talking on the phone all night every night and slow dances. We have no idea how to react when he doesn't like our friends or he doesn't want to go to the school dance with you. We don't know which of his quirks we think are adorable and idiosyncratic, and which are just plain mean. We have no idea how we are supposed to be treated. 

As harsh as it may seem, being treated like a doormat, for most of us, will show us exactly how we don't want to be treated. 

As such, even though I can say that my first serious boyfriend, Logan, who I dated for 10 months in Grade 10, is still one of the great dirt bags to walk the earth, he taught me a hell of a lot. Logan is the only guy who will ever treat me as miserably as that, because after him, I could see his traits in other guys from a mile away, and would avoid them like the bubonic plague. And if anyone ever started on any of his style trips on me? I have the faith that even my 16 year old self could have walked out the door.

Logan was probably everything a desperately insecure 15 year old girl should not have been kissing. Judgmental, angry, jealous, controlling, though mighty cute, funny, and seemingly dedicated. 

He decided he liked me the way I was, and thus, I was forbidden to change. He would turn around and walk away from me, shaking his head in disgust, if he didn't like the clothes I was wearing. He would grumble angrily if my new CD didn't meet his approval. I even hid my class projects from him for fear of his disapproval, such as the time I did a biography on Drew Barrymore, as I knew he thought she was a "slut".

He was insanely jealous, and would try to fight any guy who was friendly towards me. When I tried to stop him, he would accuse me of wanting to be with them, so I learned to just stare at the ground as he shouted and shook his fists. He would also wildly confront anyone who expressed concern for me. He never hit anyone, but that was more to do with their skills at backing away and negotiating than a flattening of his temper.

I made the mistake of letting him be my first everything, losing my virginity on my bedroom floor. He then believed he had the right to me at anytime, as though sex was solely his decision, and I was merely an accessory to it. I distinctly remember sleeping in the same room as a friend, and him chastising me to tears because I wouldn't have sex with him there. I actually tried to curl up and sleep on the bathroom floor, as though the cold tiles were more peaceful than lying beside him.

My sister was stronger than me in all of this. Despite being all of 12 years old, one time after he had berated me over the phone, I left to walk to his house, she called him, this big 16-year old, and told him to stop being so cruel to me. 

I actually set to my reminiscing about Logan yesterday over dinner, when my friend, after laughing at her distress at her first time being dumped, asked me what my most horrendous "dumped" story was.

I started laughing hysterically at how truly awful it was.

And I told her about how, in French 10, we did a fashion show. My friends asked me to be their model for a pair of shorts and a tank top. I asked them if I could wear a jacket with it. They said yes, but ended up giving away the jacket to another catwalker, so I strutted my stuff anyhow. I didn't tell Logan, but someone else reported back to him.

He asked me to meet him on the street, and proceeded to call me every name on the book. Slut, whore, tramp, you name it. In the midst of these slew of words, I was told he never wanted to see me again. The cherry on top was when I ran away, crying, he threw snowballs at my head.

I fell asleep in my parents bed, clutching my stuffed bunny. 

And I took him back the next day. 

One of the conditions of us getting back together is that I had to ask my french teacher to delete the video of me in the fashion show.

He dumped me four times in total. The fourth time, I didn't accept his pleas to come back. These pleas proceeded to bended knees, to tears, to persuading friends to knock on my door, to 3am drunken visits that began with poetry and ended with him storming off with vows to kill himself.

I still said no.

Perhaps a better victory would have been to say no the first time he broke up with me, or the first time he called me names. 

But I'm still proud the final answer was no.

As painful and unfair as it was to go through so young, I am infinitely glad I went through it at age 15, rather than at 18, 20, 25, like I see friends going through now. It is almost like one of those diseases, like the chicken pox. At least if you get it when you are young, you are immune to its later, more dangerous adult form.

And, small town that it is, that was not the last I saw of Logan. Later that summer, his poor heart apparently recovered enough to sleep with a visiting friend of mine in my bed. On my 19th birthday, he was coincidentally at the same bar, trying to fight the ex-boyfriend I'd dated after him, still holding a grudge years later. 

And just as I was wondering if I was holding onto my grudge a little too fiercely, I saw him at a friend's birthday party around five years ago in UndergradCity. He began hitting on my friend, but when he heard how we knew each other (she had dated the Ex's friend for a year-- a guy who was a bit of a ladies man in high school), he said to her "Well, if you dated him, I hope you got yourself checked"... as in STDs. He accused a girl he just met, and was trying to seduce, of having STDs.

Some things never change.