Everybody’s Got To Go Through One Heartbreak, Right? Here’s Mine.
An Introduction to The Cooties Report
The inspiration for this publication begins a long time ago, in a country far, far away:
Summer of 2010. I’m traveling around in Southeast Asia with a friend, and whilst in Thailand, meet a girl. Let’s call her Mira. A textbook manic pixie dream girl. We immediately hit it off like we’re in a goddamn movie — witty back-and-forth banter that rivals an Owen Wilson and/or Vince Vaughn movie. We travel around together for another few days, but then I’ve got to go home and she continues on her year-long travel-the-world adventure. But she’s also from the Bay Area, and she’ll be home eventually, so of course we keep in touch. A few e-mails a week, a couple Skype dates per month. Things are going well — the phrase “serious future” is said multiple times by both parties, and she even uttered “too good to be true” at one point. Oh, the foreshadowing.
After Mira decides to prolong her return home for another few months (she just loves living in New Zealand too much), it is decided that I will fly across the ocean and we’ll meet for a romantic week in Fiji. Talk about an inability to close. She fully intended to finish falling in love with me, but for reasons that are still unknown, she just didn’t feel the way she expected to. While on the trip, this subject was danced around under the guise of how she’s just got too much wanderlust to settle down in any sort of relationship.
I was probably in denial, but I figured it only meant I’d have my work cut out for me once she got back home. Alas, about a month after Fiji, she drops the hammer in an e-mail, explaining how the trip was an eye-opener for her, and despite the fact she never intended it to go down like this, she’s now smitten with one of her Kiwi friends. They remain “in a relationship” today. A heart-breaker for the ages.
Oh, and as an aside, there’s a little cherry on top: I got the relationship-ending e-mail after coming home from work … after getting let go from my job! Now, this last part was actually a good thing because I hated the job and I got to go on Funemployment. Still, I lost my job and my girl in the same day. Who knew that actually happens in real life?
[The above story is a slightly edited version of the same one that appeared on an old Grantland feature that solicited content from readers. See story #5]
I learned a lot during that relationship. I’ve learned a lot since it ended. And I’ve even managed to retain some of it. One of those things being that the truly great ones are few and far between. And that’s where we are today. Between. Since being Between, I’ve been observing the shit out of “dating life”, and it’s those Hot Takes that you’re going to be reading about, should you choose to continue. Along the way you’ll hear stories, and rants, and complaints, and theories, and deep hypothetical nonsense. All of it self-indulgent. Some of it funny. Enjoy.
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