The Break Up That Changed Everything

When the guy I dated for seven years dumped me, I had my pants around my ankles. You sort of hope your life will change when you are pants-less but that wasn’t how I had envisioned it.

I had this life with him, this life that I thought was a good life. I thought this was the guy I was going to be with forever. I wasn’t happy, necessarily, but I was comfortable. We got along all right at least. Or so I thought.

It happened on a Sunday afternoon, right after going to breakfast with his family for Mother’s Day and it was abrupt and matter-of-fact.

“I’m not in love with you anymore.”

And that was it.

Well, there was more than that. It was actually much less poetic. We came in the house and I made to take off my real-world pants and replace them with home-at-last pajama pants, like I am wont to do, and about mid-pants-off gesture he stopped me.

“Put your pants on. We need to talk.”

Nothing good ever comes after those words. I pulled my pants back up. I wasn’t going to receive bad news with my pants around my ankles. It’s undignified. I took a deep breath and waited.

“I’m not in love with you anymore.”

I’m glad he asked me to put my pants back on.

He went on about how we were more like roommates and we hadn’t been in love for a long time. He thought it would be good for me to leave. I stood dumbfounded for a few minutes and then agreed.

I somehow managed to pack 20 tank tops and no socks or underwear. I started shoving random shit into my suitcase: a novel I wasn’t even reading, a little figurine from the nightstand, a handful of bobby pins. Nothing I actually needed or wanted, just things that were within grabbing distance of the open suitcase. Somehow I thought I was going to pack seven years worth of a life together into a single suitcase.

I found out later that he had been working up to that little speech for days. Pacing in the backyard and muttering to himself. I also learned that he had met someone else, which is what prompted our break-up. Someone blonde and outgoing. Someone motivated and ambitious in a way I would probably never be. They eventually got married. (Mazel tov!)

I spent two days sobbing and vomiting, haunting my friend’s spare bedroom like a ghost. Because that is what you do when you are 28 and have just been summarily dismissed from your long-term live-in relationship. You cry and snivel and you plead with a God you don’t quite believe in to make it all a bad dream. You sleep fitfully on a blow-up mattress in a room that is not yours and every time you wake up you have to quell the panic of not knowing where you are by reminding yourself silently, resolutely that this will pass. Chin up, solider. He’ll come to his senses.

I eventually moved out of the vomiting/hysterical weeping stage and into the bargaining stage. I spent two days completely convinced of my own ability to fix things. But you don’t just tell your girlfriend of seven years to pull up her pants so you can break up with her and then take it back four days later. I failed to realize the severity of that in this particular moment.

We spoke briefly once after the break-up. I tried to sound as loving and inoffensive as I could. Convinced that if I was just sane enough for long enough this would all be over. I offered all kinds of things to attempt to fix it. I just wanted to go home. I did what most people in a break up do: I lied my ass off. I was willing to say anything to make him let me come home. I offered couples counseling, I offered to go see a dominatrix so I could learn to be more aggressive in bed. He declined both offers. (In retrospect, thank God he did.)

When that conversation ended I knew things where really over. It was time for a change. I had spent seven years living in someone else’s home, doing the things that other people wanted me to do. I had wrapped my entire life up into his and almost entirely lost sight of all the things that made me, me.

Here’s where the fun began too, there is a switch that flips after a break up where you decide you’re either going to be pathetic forever or you’re going to conquer the sadness. I decided to conquer. I left Las Vegas, the city I had remained in mostly because of him, and moved back to my hometown in Alaska. I got a job. I bought a car. I spent a few months drinking myself stupid and making friends with drag queens. I bought a lot of clothes with an inexcusable amount of sequins on them. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. I made out with some ill-conceived crushes from high school.

I had my first (and only) one night stand. I snuck out of his house at 7 a.m. and walked two miles on Easter Sunday past every church in Anchorage in my mini skirt from the night before. Cheerfully offering up “He is risen!” and a wave to every churchgoer I encountered.

I wrote poetry about pretty men who didn’t have any interest in me. I went on a lot of really bad dates. I learned to cook. I remembered that I liked to write.

I met my husband. I got married. I moved back to Las Vegas because it is my city. The city I chose and I will not let some dude keep me in exile from the bright lights and bars with no last call.

I conquered that fucking break-up. The best thing that ever happened to me, the thing that changed my life, was getting dumped with my pants around my ankles.