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There is a nursery rhyme that goes,
“There were three in the bed and the little one said ‘Roll over, Roll over’. So they all rolled over and one fell out.”
Obviously the writer of said jingle never had an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend. Because anyone who has an ex knows that the fall out has nothing to do with Them disappearing.
I was an ex-girlfriend once a upon a time, when my boyfriend(s) decided that they wanted to live happily ever after without me. Hindsight suggests that it was a good decision, possibly the best they ever made. I was a horrible person to be around, disproving my theory that the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to date me. The worst thing that could happen to anyone was to break up with me.
“I just don’t care,” The Johnny said to me one night after I had tried to make him by telling him about my horrible day/previous nights dream/dinner menu/or similar. “I am not your boyfriend anymore.”
Shit, I remember thinking. The bastard is right.
I spent subsequent months searching for someone to care about me because, apparently, I was even too much for Jack Daniels to handle. I almost fell out of bed when I realized that I was the only person applying for the job.
“It sounds so simple,” I remember thinking. “Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

There is a song that goes,
“Breaking up is hard to do.”
Obviously the writer of said ballad never had to get over a person. Because it is fucking hard. The break-up is the easiest bit. A walk in a damn field compared to having to accept it.
“I don’t want to date you anymore.”
“Shit.”
The following days, weeks, months and, even, years are like a nightmare, one that no one else, essentially, cares about.
“Just get over it,” They say.
“Oh! Just get over it! I hadn’t thought about that…”
Like it is that simple.

I dwelled on my failed relationships for [insert an embarrassingly large amount of time here] because, during those years, it meant so much more to me than not having someone to have sex with every night. And that was a big fucking deal on its own. Luckily, I found a way to combat that rather quickly. But I didn’t know of any way to deal with the hurt, the rejection, the loneliness, the longing and the unrequited and [seemingly] unconditional love that I was feeling. I was, literally, alone. The people who loved me didn’t care because they thought I was better off on my own (obviously, they don’t know what it is I do on my own) and the person I loved was the one person who genuinely refused to listen. Which, obviously, made me angry. And, often, drunk.

There are, apparently, seven stages of grief. I have thought of making a counter argument to that, theorizing that there are, at least, four hundred and twenty seven million components. But then I realized that, no, there are just seven, and I was repeating the half a dozen infamous steps over and over again like I was on a StairMaster to Hell. Depression and anger are horrible to have to deal with, and almost worst to have to be around.
“I only need a month to deal with this,” I remember my Girl Friend saying on a night she was suddenly single and a day before I was leaving for Europe.
“Thank God I am going away,” I remember thinking.
But the worst thing that can happen to anyone is denial. The stage that starts off the whole process and won’t allow a single bit of acceptance through until all other five levels are accounted for. A roll call that can take days, weeks, months and, even, years.
“I can’t believe [he/she] did this to me,” may be the most frequently spoken phrase in the English language next to, “Hello”.
“I just can’t deal with this,” comes a close second.
“Life goes on,” is the one we call a cliche.

There is a phrase that goes,
“Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”
Obviously, the writer of such prose had tried to date me and got distracted. Because it isn’t until we look back in hindsight that we realize that life was happening while we were trying to make it happen in a way we envisioned. It isn’t going in the wrong direction. Not acknowledging it all is just us looking at it from the wrong angle. Trying to get my boyfriend back was once the diversion. Life was the lessons I refused to think about in the interim. It sounds corny, cliched even, to canonize reality in such a fashion. But then I remember the times, say, I have tried to have breakfast with The Prettiest Boy In The World [official name] because I am dying of a hangover – sorry, starvation – only to find the the cooking of the bacon was the most nourishing part. I don’t remember a single meal. But I will never forget the steps leading up to it.

When I started to realize that the boys in my life who had chosen to go down the yellow brick road without me were not horrible people who owed me anything, I stopped projecting grief onto them. I stopped making them feel guilty. I stopped accusing them. I stopped being angry with them. And, eventually, I accepted that they, also, had a life. There were just smarter and had acknowledged that fact long before I ever bothered to. I could apologize to my ex-boyfriends every day, for the rest of my life, and they would still never understand my remorse for being such a horrible person for an embarrassingly long time. But I don’t. Because I just changed my behavior and that involved no longer harassing the people I love(d). I became friends with them, I met new people and I realized that I know longer had to define my self worth by their interaction with me or their rejection of me. It sounds like such a simple thing, something that isn’t even worth thinking about, but if it was, the number one dinner table conversation starter would not be, “So, I have this crazy ex…”