The Break Up

Picking at Old Wounds

So, I realize that its been quite a while since I’ve written on here. A lot’s happened. Some good, some bad. I certainly wish I had journaled everything. I am at home right now. Sitting in my parent’s living room.

I know that its probably too little, too late. But I miss you. And when we hung out this past weekend, I could feel a little bit of the old feelings sort of breaking through the shell of black crusted scar tissue of what little heart I had left. I felt a stirring. Sort of like a sleeping dragon that was ready to wake from a deep sleep. But… I realize it may be too little, too late.

My Mom asked me about you today. “Is girlfriend coming?”. I told her no. I thought I had made it clear that we were no longer together. She asked me in tagalog if there was no hope of us ever getting back together again. I feel bad because I snapped at her and said, “No mom, please, please just stop talking about her.”

Truth is, I asked her to stop talking about you not because I hate you, but because I miss you so much and it just hurts to know that I may have messed up a chance to set all things right. I wish I could take back the things I said last week. I felt like you had pushed me into a corner that I couldn’t escape and feeling like a trapped and wounded animal that’s pushed, I reacted with fangs and claws beared.

I wish I could tell you, that I will always think of you, and always love you and hope that you are happy. But maybe its too little, too late.

You know what bothers me about you?

How fast you get over me.

Big Mistake

I don’t know what happened to me this week. I know that the last thing anyone should do is hang out with their ex’s. But I did. She had asked me to drop the dogs off and cried when i tried to leave. “I miss you” amidst the crying broke me down.

In the end I invited her over and she hung out. We had sex and it was great, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think, “Is she thinking of him while I’m having sex with her?”

She had training for work for a week so I dropped her off at the facility. We had sex again and I thought it was great.

Here’s the kicker, she calls me up and is weirded out that we hang out so much. Doesn’t want to give me the wrong idea. Why do I do this to myself?? She says to me, why would you hang out with a person like me after what I’ve done to you.

Zing.

I want to from now on have those words to resonate. Have some respect for yourself man!

Anyway, I haven’t called her. I think she’s called once or twice to say hi. I’ve noticed that she isn’t so needy or missy when she’s around people. I guess I’m the convenient, hey I’m feeling lonely so come hang out with me guy.

Halloween

This night was pretty crazy. All I know is that Flow and I tried to meet up with some of our friends at a pub crawl but the line that hit the corner outside of it made us change our minds and hit up the local irish bar instead.

The irish bar was pretty cool, the blonde bartender was a knockout dressed up as a cop with a shirt that had probably shrunk in the laundry. Thank you hot water.

We sat at a table and drank some jameson as we watched football highlights and watched girls walk in. There’s a part of me that wishes I was a bit more interesting, or hell, even a lot better looking so that it would be easier to go up there and just strike up conversations with these people. I wish there was a way to approach a girl without having her defenses come up and think uh oh this guy is hitting on me, because in the end, sometimes I do just want to talk. So, thoughts aside, I simply just people watched.

We stayed til about 10pm and then took off to a bar/lounge. We got in and there were just amazing looking girls everywhere. We were ushered to our table and were joined by some of Flo’s friends from work. They were of middle eastern descent and some of the girls that were with them were knockouts.

Anyway, at one point I had gone out to meet up with another of our friends, who I’ll call B. Good guy, doesn’t drink, smart. I go outside to have the bouncer let him in when I notice 3 girls talking. On a whim I start talking to one of them and we hit it off. She was talking in a silly english accent and don’t even recall what she was saying but in a flash, we were suddenly making out. WEIRD. Anyway, I say I’ll meet her inside and she says she’ll finish her cigarrette and that was that.

I make a few more rounds and get good eye contact from girls, but as soon as I approach I get a nope… Yikes. It was truly a bad night for my self esteem, save the girl who made out with me. However, I ran into her too, and story of my night… she gave me the cold shoulder. I don’t know what happened but i was feeling a bit down at that point.

My buddy Flow on the other hand heh, he was having a good night. As a little background, my friend Flow who I’ve known for maybe 8-9 years has as long as I’ve known him been in committed long term relationships. In every single one, he’s gotten the raw end of the deal. He was a good guy, faithful to the last and yet these girls had cheated, or just fallen out of love for him. His latest girlfriend, whom he had confessed to me that he was going to propose to last September broke up with him because she wasn’t ready. Pretty much, same boat as me.

Flow is a wealth management executive at one of the banks in the city that was still doing great even with the markets being down. He basically managed rich people’s money. As one can presume from this position, he is a likeable guy, easy to talk to, and charismatic. If anything, he seemed trustworthy to a stranger, and as a friend, i can vouch for it.

A few months ago, he found out that his ex had started dating someone else. This shattered his world. But. It also unleashed a side of Flow I’ve not seen ever before. I apologize now but I had always thought his stories of hooking up with random girls were just exaggerated at the very least. But lately as I’ve hung out with him, I can’t help but reassess my initial reactions to these stories and really believe it.

There was that one time when we were taking a cab home, and he started talking to a girl at one of the stop lights. He walked out of the cab, walked into her car, and they drove off and they hooked up. Craziness.

Tonight he was on fire. He was dancing with one of the Pink Ladies from Grease and she was loving it. Just a fucking social butterfly this guy was and I was happy for him. Not only that but proud of him too. Just a guy that finally came out of his shell and wasn’t worried about being in a long term relationship. In the end he went home with a girl dressed up as slutty <something>.

I went home, alone.

Being drunk, going home alone, seeing your friends have a great time, an easy time talking to girls, and having your self esteem smashed are not good combinations my friends.

I ended up calling my ex. Yes. I know. Bad idea. I asked her to come over and she said she would the next day but not tonight, her and her roommates were playing rock band or something. I don’t know what happened next. I threw a fit. Hung up and that was that. PATHETIC. I even got on her new guy’s blog and posted a comment about how I would beat his ass if I ever saw him. Yikes. I know. I KNOW! I’m sorry world for being a jack ass.

I passed out then feeling sorry for myself.

Been a while

I thought it’d be a good idea to document day by day the occurences of how its felt to just go through a break up. Weeks later I still feel hurt. I still am having a hard time talking to girls and connecting. What the hell is wrong with me.

About a week ago I ended up at a club/lounge that was having a “lingerie ball” hosted by all the strip clubs in the area. Awesome right? Yeah we thought so too. That is until we got there. It was me, my good friend who I shall now refer to as Flow and another guy named Big R. As soon as we walked in we were met with what looked like a scene from Gossip Girl. Underage white guys walked around with suit coats and jeans, noses in the air talking to even more underage girls in cocktail dresses inundated the top bar while downstairs even moreso. We all looked at each other and thought well, where are the strippers at? None to be found.

Perhaps the only girl that looked close to being our age or at least over 21 was sitting with another guy at one of the lounge chairs. Soon we found ourselves just drinking our trademark drink - Jameson on the rocks and hung back as we continued to watch the debutante ball that had suddenly sprung forth in front of us.

Drinks flowed and before you knew it, we were feeling pretty good. The crowd had pretty much stayed the same and the funny thing is that during one of my trips to the bathroom I had seen some cops walk in to check id’s. Wonderful. One of the things that irked me wasn’t that these kids were snobby, or that they “acted” like they were rich and part of the entitlement generation, it was the fact that they were rude and pushy. It all came to a head when as I was waiting for a drink, some guy reached over me, and the girl that I had previously said was my age. He literally reached over the girl’s shoulder, and stuck out a 20 dollar bill hoping to get the bartender’s attention.

At this point I almost lost it, but simply said, “Listen, you need to back off and wait your turn. I know this is the first time you’ve been in a bar but that’s not how it works. Maybe at your daddy’s backyard bbq’s that shit flies, but not here.” and added a slight shove.

He looked at me like I had lost my mind. Didn’t say a word and DID THE SAME THING. Even the bartender working our side of the bar looked up and yelled, “Wait your turn!” over the music.

I said, “You’re kidding right?” and as I stepped forward to annihilate the son of a bitch, his girlfriend stepped in and said, “I’m so sorry, he’s not normally like this” and led him away.

At this point the guy who was with his girl that looked over 21 stuck his hand out and said, “You’re good people man, thanks a lot”. As we talked I was disappointed to learn that the girl he was with WAS actually his girlfriend, but in the end they were both cool. I guess the girl is a waitress at a new bar opening up and he invited us to come check it out. Good stuff.

At this point in the night things got blurrier. Two of our other friends came to join us. Flow and Big R left, and I was left with the 2 guys. We finally found the strippers and that was actually kind of fun. At the end of the night, I had a number in my pocket and had shaken Andrei Orlovski’s hand (the MMA guy… nevermind).

And… at the end of the night, I was still very much lonely and missing this girl.

Gut check.

I made the mistake of taking a look at my ex’s tumblr. She has a photo of her with her guy eating lunch today. Life is a roller coaster right now.

I’ll have to admit, instead of the heart wrenching that I thought would occur, I thought to myself, what can I do? Absolutely nothing. Still pretty damn sad though.

Just need to soldier on.

I taught myself Oasis Wonderwall today on the guitar. Youtube has been a godsend in terms of showing strum patterns. I seem to be picking up guitar fairly fast, although, I really really wish I had a better voice to sing along. I sound just… weird. I feel like that’s how Gepetto from the old Pinochio cartoon would sound except all out of breath (and yes I run all the time, I just can’t sing too long).

50% Chance

So a bunch of my friends, God bless their souls took me out last night. I knew that they had collectively come together to get me out of the house and back out into the world because a) 2 of them never went out on Thursday nights and b) they hated lounge/club places.

The night started out well enough, and when the waitress came around to get our drinks, everyone ordered the usual, Johnny Walker Black or Jameson on the rocks. I ordered the very unusual: water. One of my friends looked at me with a raised eyebrow and I simply replied, “Drink when you are happy, don’t drink when you are down.”

This lead to a discussion of when its ok to drink. I have always held to the belief that ultimately, alcohol amplifies whatever mood you’re in. You start drinking happy, you get drunk happy. You start drinking mad, you get drunk.. mad? Anyway, you get my point. So in the interest of not turning into a crying bumbling idiot I opted to drink water. One of my friends then said, “Well, really, alcohol does amplify your mood, but it can also alter it. It’s almost like a 50% chance. You’ll either be really happy, or just fucking devastated.” He raised his eyebrow again and add, “Those are pretty good odds.”

5 minutes later, I was drinking Jameson on the rocks.

I came to realize 2 things, as the night progressed. 1) There were a lot of underage girls in this bar (yikes, not a fan simply because at my age, one’s gotta draw the line somewhere right?), and 2) I simply just had forgotten “game” or the art of talking to women.

As the night continued, more Jameson flowed into my hands and into my mouth and up into my brain. The great thing is, well, I landed that 50% and I WAS happy. In the back of my mind I knew that she had flown out last night and was probably laying in bed with this guy, but seriously, at this point, what can I do? She had chosen her bed so to speak.

Towards the end of the night, I noticed that there was this black girl that had been giving me the “eye” and the come hither smile, but I’ll admit, I was effing intimidated. She looked a lot like Alicia Keys, but maybe not as amazing. I kept passing her on the way to the bathroom and would nonchalantly pass by kicking myself because I had no words to say. Not even “Hey.”

The same friend who had given me my first drink earlier then pointed out a gaggle of girls, 5 of them to be exact, all dancing and having a great time. There was a amazing red head in the group and she seemed to be the mother hen of the group. I literally went back and forth in my head trying to figure out what to say, how to act. Finally it seemed like they were leaving and in an act of desperation I said, “Hey you’re not leaving are you?” She kind of nodded and said they were going to sit down. Yay, I look like a retard i thought. She smiled though and they sat down. My buddy gave me a pump fist and mouthed, “That’s a start”. Yeah… I guess.

Then, the night got crazier. She came back with her friend and they started talking to us and after some talking I managed to wrangle from her her number. No small feat in itself because I’ll be honest, I’m an average looking guy I suppose, and this girl was way prettier than I thought she was. I still couldn’t help but feel a little guilty but I soldiered on. While talking to redhead I noticed the Alicia Keys lookalike giving me the evil eye. Ouch. The redhead and her group then had to leave to go grab some food so I gave her a hug and she was on her way.

While waiting for my ride (a buddy of mine who had set this whole thing up) as he tried to some girl he had been seeing to come home with him, I noticed that AKL (Alicia Keys Lookalike) was by the door of the bar. Always a champion of originality I walked up to her and said, “Hey you’re not leaving yet are you?” She turned around smiled and said that they were and they were heading to a club called xxxxxx. Yikes. It was a Thursday night and I still had to work in the morning. I told her we’d try to make it and she gave me her number… Not bad I suppose.

We ended up eating at an amazing Mexican restaurant we had eaten at during what we termed “The Summer of Love”. A time period where all of the guys in the group were neither dating nor married. We had all just recently gotten jobs and we went out literally from Thursday through Saturday. How unfunny how things have come full circle.

Ended the night by texting the two girls (who probably will never call me back, but hey I’ll take it), and walking my dogs.

First step… Check.

So everyone is telling me the best way to get past this hump is to keep busy and meet new people.

There’s this girl I bump into from time to time at work. She’s cute and has got a great smile, and on top of that has excellent taste in shoes. Yeah. I’m straight but I notice that shit too. Anyway, I had seen her over at a bar back in the city a good while ago and we had talked for a bit and in the end parted ways without so much as exchanging names and a few stories about work because a) I was in a relationship and b) she was engaged.

I gathered up some courage and talked to her even though half my body was telling me to keep walking. I stayed put and found out she wasn’t engaged anymore. Anyway, we might meet up this weekend. We’ll see. I still feel kinda guilty talking to other girls where the end prospect might be more than just a few drinks and laughs.

Hammer comes down

So, I guess she IS going out of town to visit her new guy. I hope he dies in a car crash.

Ok… Maybe not dies…. Just gets really badly hurt.

Ok… Maybe not even that. Maybe just have 50% of his face burned so that he looks like a whoopee cushion.

Geez. What have I become… :(