You know that feeling in your heart when someone you really dig the stink out of breaks up with you? It feels like an elephant is sitting on your chest, constricting your breath. You can't move, can't function, can't think, can't imagine going on without them.
You lie on your bed in the fetal position, gently rocking yourself, sucking your thumb with a box of tissue nearby as you listen to the vocal stylings of Journey and Barry Manilow. And you sing along in your shaky, teary voice, "I can't smile without you, can't smile without you. I can't laugh and I can't sing, I'm findin' it hard to do anything ..."
You sob big, heaving sobs that shake your body to its core. You shake your fist up to the sky and exclaim, "Why? Why oh why does this always happen to me? Why can't I ever get it right? When will it be my turn? Why. Doesn't. He. Love. Me?" Booger bubbles pop in your nostril region and drip down into your open, pleading mouth. But you don't care, you don't care if you're sucking in your own mucus as you sob your miserable life away because you've been dumped and you're hurting and you don't think life will ever hold meaning for you again.
Unless ... I can get him back! Suddenly you're filled with hope for the future. You spring upright, blowing your nose on the sleeve of his favorite shirt, the same shirt you've been wearing since the day he left because it still held some semblance of his scent. Now it reeks of Fritos and the cheap cherry wine you've been drowning your sorrows in, but you don't care because it's his, and when you are wearing it you just feel closer to him.
So you jump out of bed and go to the secret place you have stashed every sick and demented memory of him since the day you shared your first date. And as you pull the box out of hiding, you look over your shoulder, even though you know you're alone in your room, because you still fear that if anyone saw the contents of the secret "love box," they'd suggest you look into a room at the local loony bin; they just wouldn't understand the connection you feel to this person. Like the toothpick he used at the dinner table at Fleming's to pick the medium rare filet mignon out of his perfect teeth. Or the old, dried-up tissue he blew his nose in when he had a cold last spring. The now-empty ChapStick he used to lubricate his soft, luscious lips before he kissed you. Or the boxer shorts you "borrowed" the first time you slept over at his place and always meant to wash, but never did.
And as you sift through the contents, all the misty water-colored memories of the way you were come flooding back and you are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has made a huge mistake. He must have been out of his monkey-ass mind to even think the two of you don't belong together. So you devise a plan, a great plan; something that will jolt his memory and rip him from the grip of confusion that caused him to break up with you in the first place. And then you stumble upon exactly what you were looking for: the naked pictures he shot of you in the cabin at Mount Charleston on your weekend getaway last winter.
Perfect! You decide to take the pictures to his house and drop them off at his doorstep in a card, but not just any card, a card that he gave you. A card filled with all the sentiments of love and caring he once felt, and you know in your heart that when he sees you in all of your glory, surrounded by his own words of love, he'll come running back into your arms and beg you to spend the rest of your life with him.
So you climb into your car at 3 in the morning and drive to his house wearing nothing but the rank, snot-infested shirt that once belonged to him. You tape the card to his front door and as you do, you pause at the door, knowing that just inside, sleeping peacefully in the bed you slept in with him once upon a time, lies the object of your desire. And you cry. Hard. So hard that you wake the neighbors who call him and tell him that a crazed, half-naked lunatic is pressed against his front door making animal-like noises.
But he doesn't answer because he is out of town—with his new girlfriend—which is explained to you by his mother, who does answer because she and his father are house-sitting. And she threatens to call the police if you don't vacate the premises immediately. So you flee into the night, knowing you've never been more humiliated in your entire life. That is, until he calls a few days later to tell you his mother opened the card you left behind, the one with the naked pictures of you. And he threatens to file a restraining order.
Finally you realize: He might not be coming back.
So sue me: This time I am the breaker-upper and not the sad, pathetic breaker-uppee, and it felt better. As I stared down at the grande-soy-chi-latte and the card I had given him once upon a time when I was his girl, that he'd left on my front porch, my heart ached for him. I recognized the signs I knew so well. It was his last-ditch effort to try to rip me from the grip of confusion he was probably sure had caused me to break up with him to begin with. And I knew I'd have to tell him: I won't be coming back.
Sonja is a writer who covers the ins and outs of relationships. Or is it the ups and downs?