I Played with Fire, I Burned It All Down

For at least the last ten years, I've written a quote on the board in front of my classroom every week. Because I want them to be meaningful, sometimes it takes forever for me to decide on, or find, a quote to use, and oftentimes I recycle favorites from year to year. This week when school started, neither was the case. I used a brand new one, and despite not having planned on using it, when I picked up my marker because it was time to write a quote, I knew what quote I wanted to use right away.

This might come as quite the surprise to all of you in light of my emotional distress and basket-case state, but I kicked my ex-Virgo out of the house. 

Yes, that's right. All my hemming and hawing and crying and disbelieving, and my ex-Virgo is my ex-Virgo because of me. 

Well, sort of. 

I won't go into all the details because those are between me and him. What I will tell you is that my ex-Virgo was doing some shady stuff, and that's not just me saying it was shady. It was shady enough that he has many times said how wrong he was in doing what he was doing and that he never should have done it. That he was the one in the wrong when I, one night the last week of March, snooped through his computer looking for something to explain the feeling of disconnect I'd recently been feeling between us is indisputable and concrete (although, yes, I know snooping is also wrong, and I swear swear swear I'll never in my life do it again because as they say, if you go looking for something, you just might find it). My reaction, however, wasn't exactly in the right.

When I found what I found, I guess you could say I kind of lost my mind. Although it was the middle of the night, I woke him up and started interrogating him, screaming and demanding to look through his phone. After a few hours of back and forth that went on until almost five in the morning, I told him we were over but that I wasn't making him leave, that he could stay until he figured things out. Fast forward two hours to when I found something even more upsetting elswhere on his computer (yes, I was snooping again), and I was singing a different tune. 

Once again I woke him up, only this time I told him I wanted him gone. Then. That day. Not even that day. That morning. As in, take your entire life's worth of stuff, pack it up, and get out right the fuck now. 

I didn't mean it, of course.

Even as I said the words, I knew I didn't. When he asked me before he called and woke up his friends to come and help him move if I really meant it, I said yes. 

But I didn't. I didn't mean it at all. 

When he hung up with the first friend he called and asked me if I meant it again, I told him he needed to get the fuck out.

But I didn't want him to go. 

I never wanted him to go.

I was just so mad. 

I was just so rash. 

 

***

My therapist says I wasn't rash at all. According to her, this was something that had been going on for a long time (it was), and I'd talked to my ex-Virgo about it many times (I had), and I knew something had to change (it did), and this was my way of ensuring it would (boy, has it). 

Now, I'm not sitting here justifying what my ex-Virgo did and saying it was okay because there's not a world in which it was. What I am saying is that having been in a relationship with him for as long as I had, what I should have done is calmed down before confronting him or if not that because I was justifiably not calm, not have kicked him out. I should have talked to him, broken up with him even, made him move into the extra room. I should have been more reasonable than I was.

I should have not been rash.

***

I follow an account called the millennial.therapist on Instagram. A few days ago, she posted this:

That night, March 25, I wasn't that. Frustrated and upset and betrayed, I was the opposite of that. In no way was I committed to understanding my ex-Virgo or addressing our issues. 

Instead, I was rash.

And you know how I know I was rash despite what my therapist said? A couple days later, after I had time to calm down and assess the fallout, I told my ex-Virgo how sorry I was and told him I wanted to work on things (and now, five months later, I'd work on things still). Despite what he had done, despite not only his dishonesty and betrayal but also his--inability? Refusal?--to move away from what he had betrayed me with or make changes so that I'd start to feel more comfortable with the circumstances surrounding his dishonesty and betrayal--I found us a couple's counselor because I was committed to understanding him, addressing our issues, and making it work.

***

Two months later, on the night of June 2, my ex-Virgo was dishonest with me again, again involving the same thing, the thing we'd been fighting about since the summer before, the thing I'd cried to him about, the thing he'd ignored me about for months, the thing that broke us up, the thing we were trying to get past. 

This time, though, I wasn't rash. 

After what I'd done the last time, the resulting situation we found ourselves in, I simply told him to go home and call me when he was ready to move forward. I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I just told him to go home.

He didn't.

He begged. He pleaded. He told me how much he loved me. How sorry he was.

I wouldn't budge, and in the morning, after seven hours of back of forth during which I told him some things he didn't like hearing but nothing out of rashness although they're things I wouldn't have said had I not been so upset, he went home.

The next time we talked--no, I'm sorry, text--the next time we text--after having been together for five days less than three years--he told me it was over (perhaps not as bad as the Post-It breakup between Carrie and Berger, but pretty close). We were done. And unlike me, who realized after a few days that I'd been rash and was committed to understanding my partner and addressing issues with him, he meant it.

And so--

and so

and so 

and so

and so 

I feel like all I'm every doing these days is writing "and so." 

And so here I am alone. 

And so here I am with everything related to me and my ex-Virgo in a box on the floor in my closet including the J ♡ K ring I finally took off last night, my house scrubbed clean of his memory as if he didn't even exist. 

And so here I am watching hours of video game play and cut scenes and listening to some obnoxious-voiced Dokkan guy I used to hate just to feel connected to my ex-Virgo's ghost. 

And so here I am in therapy trying to address my temper and impulsivity but doing nothing but crying about my ex-Virgo for an hour every Saturday morning.

And so here I am crying a lot more than for an hour every Saturday morning over someone who was decidedly not committed to addressing issues, understanding, or growing with me. 

***

So moral of my story? Next time you're incensed, infuriated, enraged--

stop.

Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't do it. Stop right there in your tracks.

Take a deep breath. Calm the fuck down. 

Think about the end result.

Think about the sad, forlorn, rash woman who cries so much, if she put in some effort, she could start mining salt. 

Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying

When a few weeks into the summer I told my ex-Virgo, who was taking a class and training for a new job from 11:30 in the morning to 9:00 at night, that he was lucky he was so busy because he didn't have time to be sad and that I had it way worse because I had nothing to do but think about us and cry, he told me that wasn't true, that I had no idea how he felt. Although I knew I'd oversimplified things in my accusation that he was too busy to be sad, and although I really did believe him when he said he was, I still felt sure my time off work made the breakup worse for me, a thought that was echoed by just about everyone I knew. 

All July long, everybody told me that once I went back to work in August, things would start to improve. Once August rolled around, I heard it even more. When you go back to work in two weeks, you'll start to feel better.  I just needed to be busy instead of sitting in the house in self-imposed isolation where I did nothing but think about my ex-Virgo all day long. My mother said it, my sister said it, my friends said it, my therapist said it. So many people said it, and they said it so much, I halfway believed them. At least I won't be sitting in the house looking at the spaces we occupied together, the ghostly imprint of the last three years impressed upon every last thing around me, I thought. At least I'll be forced to think about something else. 

Surprise, surprise, I know, but that's not how it happened at all.

How it actually happened is I went back to work last Monday, and that first week back felt like the worst week of my entire life.  I suppose objectively this can't be true because I've had a lot of bad weeks--like if we made some sort of bad-week scale and used some constant to measure bad weeks, surely others would have to have been worse--but on the current Kelly scale, the badness of last week tops them at all.

Instead of going to work and "forgetting" about my ex-Virgo, here's how things went down.

At the end of the day on my first day of work, I was called into my new AP's office (that's assistant principal for those of you not in the know) and told I was losing the AP class I've been teaching for the past thirteen years, the AP class that I'd been scheduled to teach up until at least mid-morning that day, because they "were going another way." At first she tried to blame it on my scores, which is ridiculous because my scores are above the global and state average--and if you want to talk about the aforementioned objective, objectively quite good--and when questioned directly if it was because my department head lost her two dual enrollment classes, she conceded that was part of it but maintained it was mainly due to my scores having gone down. 

Now, losing my AP class to someone with thirty-five years' seniority who runs the English department is one thing, but sitting there in my AP's office post-pandemic when everybody's scores in every subject in every school across the country are down and being told my scores were the reason I was losing a class when my first year at this school when things were normal until right before my students' exam, my principal called me at home during the summer to tell me my students had the highest AP Language scores in the history of the school is another thing entirely. Of course my students' scores have gone down. The world's scores have gone down. 

I wish I could say I handled it well, and who knows? Maybe if this had happened any other year and I weren't already an emotional basket case, I would have, but it's not another year, and I am an emotional basket case, and so I immediately burst into tears. While my AP, who's virtually a stranger to me, sat there looking extremely awkward and uncomfortable, I cried and cried, and every time I thought I was finished, I cried again, and when I say every time I thought I was finished, I don't mean just while I was sitting in her office, I mean the entire day.

I went up to my classroom on the way to my next meeting where I couldn't stop crying. I went to my department meeting where I cried some more. I got in my car where I cried off and on the whole way home. I got home where I cried while I told my son about losing my AP class. And the whole time I was crying, from about five seconds after my AP told me about losing my class? All I could think was how much worse this was because I didn't even have my ex-Virgo to go home to, to sit with me and listen to me, to make me feel okay, a constant thought ticking through my mind that made me cry even harder every time it arose (and in this parenthetical for the sake of not leaving anything out, I'll tell you that he and I talked for an hour and a half that night, and just like he always had the ability to when I was upset by anything other than him, he made me feel much, much better even after we hung up the phone).

The next day I felt a little bit better about the AP thing when I woke up (probably because I still felt better about my long talk with my ex-Virgo the night before), so that was good, but instead of going to school, I had to go to FIU for a dual enrollment meeting, and that was bad. Why? Well, over the past three years my ex-Virgo and I had gone to FIU together four or five, maybe six times plus that's where he went to school, so everywhere I looked while I was on campus, all I could think of was him. It also didn't help that I was however many miles closer to his new house and new job nor did it help when I went to Vegan Cuban Cuisine, a place we'd gone together when we were together, with some random teacher from school instead of with him. 

Wednesday was more mopiness but no more than usual, but Thursday. Let me tell you about Thursday.

As I'm sure you've ascertained, I'm not a private person at all. I've always been a scream-from-the-rooftops sort of girl and have loved to show off the things that I love whether it be through stickers on my car, the clothes I wear, posters in my house, my tattoos. In my teacher life, that translates to photos. Since I started teaching twenty-three years ago, I've always had lots of photos up in my classroom. Griffin, Keifer, my ex-Glenn, our first dog Christopher, Hudson, Jazzy, old students I was particularly close to. My people (yes, that also means my pets) were everywhere. 

Each year at the end of the school year when I have to clean my classroom, I put all the photos and their corresponding magnets in a small box, and at the start of the new school year, I buy more photo prints, sometimes adding and sometimes replacing, and the photos I replace, I place in a shoebox along with some other classroom paraphernalia I no longer use. That shoebox, let me tell you, is full of old pictures of my ex-Glenn and the kids. As you can imagine, over the course of twenty-three years, a picture person accumulates a lot of photos, especially a picture person who loves to show off the people she loves, so there are probably fifty, sixty, who knows? Maybe even more photos in that box. Some of them are even framed. 

Well, this new school year, on Thursday, when I was setting up my room, I pulled out not the shoebox of old photos but the little box with the magnets and photos that came off my board in June, the photos that usually go right back up except for maybe one or two, and there they were: three photos of my ex-Virgo and me that I had taken down when boxing up my room in June. Two you haven't seen; one, you have. It's a photo of me and him and Hudson in a hotel that we took when we went to Tampa to see an orchestral presentation of the Final Fantasy VII Remake. 

I took those photos out of the box, I stared at them, and of course, because I never do anything else these days, I cried. I then picked up my full-of-old-photos shoebox and took off the lid, and the first thing I saw was a framed photo of my ex-Glenn. Immediately, I closed the box. I put it back on the lower shelf of my standing desk. I put the photos of me and my ex-Virgo down on the edge of my desk. I left.

When I got home, I told Keifer about the photos (sans the part about the full-of-old-photos shoebox) of me and my ex-Virgo, and he could tell where the conversation was going before I said anything else. 

Don't put them up. If you're not together, don't put them up. At least not all three. Then he told me he thought one was okay. I instantly felt relief. 

We did say we're staying friends, I said. And the one of me and him and Hudson is like a friend photo, I said even though admittedly, it's absolutely not (although out of all three, it's definitely the most friendish one. Here. Judge for yourself).

The next day, the last day I had to set up my classroom, I showed up to work with new photos in hand, recent photos of me with Griffin and Keifer along with a photo of each of my (our) new dogs, feeling the absence of recent photos of me and my ex-Virgo in ways it seems impossible to feel something that isn't there. I then picked up the photo of me, my ex-Virgo, and Hudson, and I moved it to the pile of photos to be put up on the board. I started setting up not just my photos but everything else in my classroom, all the while ignoring the two remaining photos that sat on my desk, the photos that the previous day I couldn't stand to put in that full-of-old-photos shoebox. Finally, my classroom was done.

But, still, the photos sat on my desk. 

I know it probably doesn't seem like such a big deal, putting some old photos in a box; after all, I have a ton of old photos of Griffin and Keifer in that full-of-old-photos shoebox, and putting them there has never been a big deal, but also in that box in addition to old photos of my ex-Glenn are photos of me and Clinton and my Clinton-related group of friends as well as some old students who in the past I was very close to but now no longer know at all. In short, yes, Griffin and Keifer are in that full-of-old-photos shoebox, but my relationship with them is different; excepting photos of them, every photo in that box represents a once-significant part of my life that has died. 

And so, putting those photos of me and my ex-Virgo in that full-of-old-dead-photos-relationships box was is huge. 

Mammoth.  

Putting those photos of me and my ex-Virgo in that box isn't really putting photos of me and my ex-Virgo in a box; it's putting us in one. 

And I can't do it. 

Not yet. 

In the end, I stuck them in a notebook in my desk drawer, out of my students' and my sight but also out of the box where my relationships have been put to rest.

And so,

as far as the notion that going back to work would make me feel better because my mind would be occupied by other things? 

Can you hear me laughing where you are?

Bury Me in Memory

I watch videos of my Virgo almost every night before I go to sleep. Among other things, he mouths I love you to me in some of the videos; in others, he sends kisses to me; sometimes he does both. I've tried not watching the videos; in fact, in the beginning, I couldn't because watching hurt too much, watching what was once mine show me how much he loved me in a way that always made me feel connected and close, but as time has gone on, I can't not watch the videos for precisely that reason--they make me feel connected and close. 

I watch his little half smile, the puckering of his lips, the distinct shape of I love you they make, and for a few minutes, it's almost like nothing has changed. It's almost like nothing has changed, but as much as it's almost like nothing has changed, of course, I know it has. When I'm watching the videos, when I'm watching my Virgo, I'm watching him love me and show me that he loves me, and I'm loving him back, but I'm also consciously missing him at the same time because even though the videos make me feel connected and close, I'm still fully conscious the whole time I'm watching that we're over. It's not like I'm watching and pretending that nothing has changed.

It's not like this morning.

I don't know what possessed me to do it this morning, it's the first time in this entire ordeal that I have, but when I came in from walking the dogs, just for a second, if even for that, I imagined my old life. I saw myself saying to the dogs, or maybe it's more apropos to say in my head, I said to the dogs, Okay, now it's time for me to go upstairs and see Daddy, and then I pictured my Virgo upstairs asleep on his side of the bed. I didn't just picture it, though, not in the way that I often picture scenes and things from our past, things like us sitting at the table together eating dinner side by side or sitting on the couch watching TV or driving around in his car, Apsaras, him holding my hand, our fingers intertwined. I pictured it in a way that leans toward pretending. It was just for a second if even that--a flash, really--but it was like my Virgo really was sleeping upstairs. 

And it was devastating. 

As everyone knows, I've been heartbroken, and my coping has been muy malo. I do nothing but think about my Virgo and have cried more in the last two months than I've cried in my life, and these tears? They don't care where I am or who I'm with; when these fuckers want to come out, they wait for nothing with absolutely no regard to acceptable behavior or social norms (case in point: in an attempt to do something healthy i.e. not sit in the house and cry about my Virgo, when I was invited to a party/get together by a professional yet friendly acquaintance, I said yes, only to burst into tears when a woman I'd just met that afternoon asked me what I've been doing all summer long). Anyway, the point? Things have been bad or more accurately, things have been horrific, abysmal, brobdingnagianly awful. 

But today was different. 

I don't know why that flash of the past as if it were my present . . . no, that's not what it was. That what?  Alternate reality present? Alternate reality present. That's what it was. An alternate reality present. I don't know why that flash of alternate reality present was so particularly painful, so crushing that I had to go upstairs immediately and regroup on my bed (where I had another flash, this time seeing the room exactly as it had been, the absent picture of Snake that my Virgo hung on the wall years ago and the picture of two skeletons holding hands with the caption I'll find you again wherever we end up next no longer absent, his personal belongings still stacked on his nightstand) and then, when I  came downstairs, cried my way through so many tissues, my table looked like the byproduct of some attempt at arts and crafts.

I don't know if this is what healing looks like because I've never been here before since by the time my ex-Glenn and I finally ended, our ending was so overdue, I didn't feel a fraction of what I'm feeling now, but I don't think that it is. I've experienced plenty of pain before, both physical and emotional, but never sustained with such acuity, such ferocity, and in those experiences, the pain gets better instead of worse. So healing? I'm thinking no. 

I'm also thinking that you're maybe reading this waiting for me to come to some sort of revelation or unveil some deeper meaning as I've done in previous posts. If that's the case, I've got some bad news. There's no we-have-to-experience-loss-to-appreciate-what-we have or suffering-is-necessary-for-growth-and-makes-people-stronger here, no theme, no general message about life.

What's here is pain. Suffering. Debilitating wounds. 

What's here is an all-encompassing, suffocatingly enveloping, life-altering trauma, a loss of hope, a lack of understanding, a dearth of trust, and a surplus of incredulity. 

What's here is me. 

All Alone I Feel So Much

Early this afternoon when I logged onto the newly bastardized version of Twitter, I saw that Paul Reubens had died. Like most people my age, Reubens was a huge part of my childhood, but unlike a lot of people my age, it wasn't because I loved him so much but because my childhood best friend Chris (formerly known as North Star around these parts, from here on out known as Chris) was obsessed with him. You have no idea how many times I heard I know you are, but what am I, I know you are but what am I, I know you are but what am I, infinity, or Shhh, I'm listening to reason, or Tell 'em large Marge sent you! or I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. I could go on, but I think you get the point. 

Of course the first thing I wanted to do when I saw he'd died was text my Virgo, but I was on the phone with Griffin when I found out, so we talked about it, and since I really only felt a tangential connection to Reubens, I was all right, and that immediate desire I'd felt to text my Virgo subsided. 

About two hours later, Griffin called me again, just for a minute to deliver what I'm sure is going to sound callous (not because I'm different from other people; because I admit these things) but what I found to be far more devastating news, and which he clearly knew would be devastating news thus the reason he called: The Alchemist is closing down. 

What's The Alchemist? you ask. Only one of my favorite places in the entire world, a coffeehouse I've been going to for years, a place that's one of many places, an entire complex overrun with flowers and weeds, broken walls and abandoned art, and most importantly, peace. The Alchemist is a place I've always found peace, one of the few places in South Florida I cherish.

Kei and me the first time we went to The Alchemist

Because I love the Alchemist so much and find it to be such a perfect place, after the first time I went up until I started going with my Virgo, I always posted a photo saying the exact same thing: The site of my future imaginary wedding. I imagined myself there wearing some sort of flowy bohemian wedding dress with wildflowers in my hair, a messy bouquet in my hands, but when I say imagine, I mean imagine all the way around. I didn't say future imaginary wedding because I thought I'd never have the opportunity to get married again, I said future imaginary wedding because I didn't want to. I'd had so many problems not only being married to my ex-Glenn but also getting unmarried from him, I swore that no matter what, I'd never get married again.

And then I met my Virgo. 

I met my Virgo, and I loved him so much, and when we talked about spending forever together and marriage came up, I realized how much I did want to be his wife. We talked about how a piece of paper doesn't really change anything, and then we talked about how it does, and all I know is my future imaginary wedding plan became much less imaginary especially after we talked about how much I wanted to get married there, and so, once my Virgo and I started going to The Alchemist together, the words site of my future imaginary wedding never graced a photo again. 

At The Alchemist complex with my Virgo in what would have been one of many perfect wedding spots

And now The Alchemist is about to be gone. 

My Virgo is gone

the Alchemist is going to be gone

the possibility of my actual wedding is gone

and now even the comfort of my longtime imaginary wedding is gone,

so naturally, The Alchemist being so important to me, my first instinct when I heard the news was to send my Virgo a link to an article I'd immediately looked up, but again, I refrained; after all, what does the closing of a coffeehouse I love have to do with him at this point?

Not two hours later, I opened my phone to look for I don't remember what when I saw that Angus Cloud died. Angus Cloud! I immediately filled with horror when I saw the news, and I have to admit, this being the third really sad thing I saw for the day (not including some Get Up Kids lyrics Griffin sent me that made me want to shoot myself in the head), I sobbed. I also have to admit that I sobbed not because Angus Cloud died although it's so horribly, horribly tragic, but because my Virgo and I had watched Euphoria together and loved it and particularly loved Fezco's character, and for the third time today, I  wanted to share something with him--I so achingly wanted to share something with him--but didn't. 

I sobbed because for three years my Virgo was my best friend, the person I text or called or physically turned to and shared everything with, and now I have a phone full of screenshots of things like the word hurkle-durkle and people talking about sexy boxes in r/metalgearsolid that I'll never send, weeks' worth of places I've gone and things that I've done that I'll never call to share, and an entire world constructed of everything from thoughts about The Originals to the possibility of opening a business in Orlando to news of people dying and coffeehouses closing and dreams of future imaginary weddings being dashed that I'll never roll over in bed and tell him. 

I sobbed because I used to have a person, and now I don't.