Tell Me on a Monday?
It’s been three days, ten hours and approximately 35 minutes. I feel okay. I feel good even. As if a weight is lifted, but then, without that weight, I feel like I’ve lost my footing, like I don’t know which end is up anymore.
Who am I going to call on my way home from work every night?
Who am I going to visit every weekend?
Who am I am going to go crying/yelling/flipping out to when something good happens?
When something bad happens?
He was the one I called, the one I confided in, the shoulder I cried upon, the one I wanted to share everything with. He was the one who knew my hopes and dreams, my fears and insecurities, my guilty pleasures, my secret desires.
I can’t quite believe it.
The someday house is gone.
The someday wedding is gone.
The someday kids are gone.
And with them, my best friend is gone too.
I won’t say I didn’t see this coming—indeed, there have been times when I’ve wished for it, when I’ve held my breath and waited for one or both of us to lower the boom—but I didn’t expect it to happen this week.
Not on Monday.
I teach tap on Mondays.
I take attendance and grant bathroom breaks and go home at the end of the night to watch TV on Mondays.
I don’t break up with my boyfriends.
I certainly don’t do it over the phone, seated on a couch by myself with a packet of Traders Joe’s spinach pasta cooling on the counter.
I mean, we’re already halfway through January!
Who breaks up halfway through January?
Could we not have made it until Valentine’s Day at least?
Or saved each other the trouble of Christmas presents?
It’s too late to make New Year’s Resolutions now, too late to wallow in despair at midnight and decide, for once and for all, to get a makeover or a new haircut and to sign up for an online dating service.
It just irks me. Life altering events are supposed to happen on significant days, not on Mondays in the middle of January.
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
15 Responses to “Tell Me on a Monday?”
my heart goes out to you.
Thanks
Heartbroken for you. Even if it is a good thing for you, it hurts.
Yeah… Very true. Thank you.
What makes any day more significant than the next, other than the fact that you choose to give it significance?
I don’t think I ever told you (maybe I didn’t even post it on my blog), but I was once engaged (a different girl before getting married). I proposed in mid-September, two years after we met. She graduated in December and we bought a one-way ticket for January so that I could come down, we would pack her car, and drive back to DC together. I flew to her home and visited her and my families for Christmas, which came and went, everything as planned, gifts exchanged, etc. Then I flew to my home in DC to work the one or two weeks before I was supposed to fly back and help pack the car.
I believe it was no more than three days after Christmas – I suppose I was spared the New Year’s missed opportunity, but spending New Year’s alone was not any better. I’d argue worse – when I got an email. An email! I couldn’t get her on the phone; in fact, I never heard from her again, save for a very brief AOL IM chat three weeks later. The day I got the email, my parents called in the afternoon; she had left a box, literally in the middle of the garage floor, with all of the Christmas presents I and my parents had given her that year. She used the code to my parents alarm to open the garage, then closed it up, and just left a shitty explanation of a note and the engagement ring. I think I was so insulted and hurt by the fact that she left a ring specifically for her (an Opal surrounded by Tanzanite). I mean, did she think I wanted to keep it for someone else?
It took a solid year before I even would speak to anyone in a romantic or flirtive sense. And to be honest, the first person was also the woman who I ended up marrying, and who was the last person I dated before as well, so I suppose I only talked to her because I always had feelings/feeling never went away.
I don’t know that any of what I wrote will actually help. I suppose I just want you to know that your feeling that these things suck, they shouldn’t happen on Mondays in the middle of January – if ever – is well received. And maybe also I want to caution you about getting involved with anyone from your past that it didn’t work with before; that certainly didn’t work for me 😦
You deserve good things, Kat. I hope they come to you.
Thanks for sharing, Zak. I actually remember hearing something about the ring being left in your garage– that definitely takes the cake for sucky break up! It’s sad no matter which way you look at it but I know you’re in a much better place now and I’m hoping that I soon will be too.
Well, the cake ended up being a decent “award” from all that. Wanna slice? I like sharing with pretty girls 🙂
Much love, honey.
Thanks, Dan. Will you be at Kathryn’s launch this weekend?
I read what Zak wrote, and though I’m not sure his point was how I took it, I have to agree about not putting too much significance on days. The husband and I have several relationship milestones built around special days. I think our stuff covers 4th of July, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day weekend, Mardi Gras, and at least two friend’s weddings. That’s all the good stuff.
The bad stuff fell on random ass days. The time he broke my heart so bad I didn’t think it would repair was on a random Tuesday or maybe a Thursday. The time I almost called off the wedding was in the winter, I can’t even tell you if it was before or after Christmas. I’m glad the bad days had no significance.
Once the wounds heal, and you’re all strong and put-back-together, you’ll be happy you can’t pin down exactly when your world was broken. In that way, random Monday breakups in the middle of January is probably the only way it should happen.
I’m sorry for your lost dreams and broken heart, Kat. Be gentle with yourself.
Thank you, Maia. I am allowing myself to sleep a lot, watch comedies and write as often as I want to and about whatever I’d like. Also, something you said in meeting ages and ages ago came back to me and has made everything a lot easier so thank you for sharing way back when 🙂
hmmm, was it “things have a way of working out the way they are supposed to, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding”? That’s my baseline.
Ugh, breakups make me feel barfy and transparent and stretched too thin. But it’s never too late to recelebrate the New Year. I’ve been celebrating the whole month. You’ve still got eight more days – you need to go jump in a large body of water, or build a big bon fire, or climb to the top of something – a mountain, a builiding, whatever you can find. Deep breaths of cold air. And listen to a lot of Katy Perry and Patty Griffin. And definitely a big internet hug.
Hmmm… I’ll take this all into advisement 🙂 Thanks